


Survivors

by Nagaina



Category: D. Gray-man
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2010-03-06
Updated: 2010-03-06
Packaged: 2017-10-07 18:45:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 28,806
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/68072
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nagaina/pseuds/Nagaina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>DGM theoretical postfic/Victoriana pastiche stylistic writing experiment, officially rendered AU by canon several chapters ago. In the aftermath of war, the survivors piece together what's left of their lives.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. An Unexpected Visitor

**London, England 2 January 18--**

Number Fourteen Cogman Street was, like the buildings to either side, a shop of perfectly ordinary provenance, but for one significant difference: it was always clean. For a city wherein the early morning fogs were sometimes known to leave asphyxiated perambulators in their wake, this was no small feat and, to some observers, it smacked of magic. (Those observers were closer to being correct than they knew, but the proprietor of the shop saw no reason to tell anyone that.) No coal-smut adhered for long on its respectable red-brick façade, its largish display windows, or its outrageously vivid green door. Its simple gilt-lettered signboard ("Bookseller") went unmolested by the local hooligans, who had long since learned that attempting to fling filth at it was an exercise in futility. Even the brass plaque ("Books, Periodicals, Curiosities, Fine Stationary, Notary, Translations, Lessons") bolted to the door never seemed to collect the usual patina of tarnish, though the proprietor insisted that this was just the result of regular replacement. The proprietor occasionally allowed his neighbours to catch him doing such reassuring things as actually tightening the bolts on the door-plaque or wiping rain-deposited grey streaks off the windows with a realistically grubby cloth. Newcomers to the little cul-de-sac square of shops and flats still expressed the requisite amount of surprise and disbelief until the long-timers either disabused them of their silly notions or the new wore off. Almost no one paid attention to the ancient beldams and greybeards who hissed that, if you watched closely on certain nights, you could actually see that place shiver like an offended cat and flick the grime off its face. The proprietor was a more interesting topic of gossip than his strangely clean establishment anyway.

Even in the middle of London, the largest city in the world, the beating heart of the largest Empire, washed in refugees from the late unpleasantness on the Continent and travellers of all sorts from even further abroad, he cut a memorable figure. He was, by all decent standards, too young to be a partner in someone else's firm much less the sole owner of his own demonstrably successful business, a standard he serenely ignored. By a similarly decent standard, he was too old to be without that most pleasant of a successful businessman's life accessories – a charming wife and children to help him spend his money – and his lack of a wedding ring was a taunt to the neighbourhood scolds and a temptation to their unmarried daughters. Most of the residents of the Street and the larger community of Addersby Square thought him foreign, possibly an American, for all that he spoke the Queen's English without the slightest trace of an accent. The nature of his foreignness wasn't an easily identifiable attribute, nothing as material as a defect of language or manner, because his manners were very good, though not a gentleman's manners by any stretch of the imagination. If pressed on the issue, his neighbours tended to shrug and say, "There's just something about him," or, more precisely, "Just look at him."

And, in truth, there was some justice to that observation: the bookseller stood out against the backdrop of his staid and colourless neighbours like a tropical bird amongst starlings, though there was little enough he could do about that. He wore his untameable mess of copper-red hair cut closer than he had years prior, short enough for the silver starting at his temples to show him compounded as mortal as the next man, and clothing of a solidly conservative cut and colour that did an admirable job of disguising the quality of the leanly muscular body underneath it. Only sharp-eyed women noticed that his ears had once been pierced. The eye-patch invariably excited quite a bit of comment, though his explanation ("Tragic stone-skipping accident in my misspent youth") had been accepted as local common knowledge. He made no attempt to explain his oddly-shaped cane or the slight but noticeable limp that made walking with it a necessity rather than an affectation. (The rumours about it ranged from the ridiculous to the romantic, though none of them came close to the truth. His neighbours generally thought him far too young to have been involved in the 'late unpleasantness' and if someone had told them of the precise intimacy of his participation, that person would have been laughed out of the Court.) He had the sort of face that looked as though it was once more accustomed to smiling but had fallen out of the habit, as he'd fallen out of any habits involving friendly pints at the tavern after a long work-day or regular attendance at any church, Catholic or Protestant, or sharing his Christian name with anyone at all since his arrival seven years prior. The name on his calling-card, and painted on his shop's sign, was "R. Bookman," which, given his profession, was at least appropriate. For the first few months, his neighbours tried gamely to call him "Mr. Bookman," but even to them it never sounded quite right, and soon he was just "the Bookman" of Number Fourteen with the bright green door, the familiarly strange bachelor not-quite-gentleman who lived in the little flat over his shop and doled out donations whenever Our Lady of Sorrows came calling for the widows and orphans of the Continent, who gave every child in the neighbourhood all the free paper they could possibly need for their lessons and two good pens each when they first went off to school, who tutored the some of the more gifted boys and girls personally and underwrote a substantial number of their educational expenses from his own pocket, who directed those attracted to certain unusual curios on his shop's shelves to a particular house in Chelsea with the murmured suggestion that they might seek a career in the Church and the only smile most saw out of him, which was a sad one. In such ways did he become part of the life of Addersby Court, an eccentric but good-hearted and generous neighbour, solitary but not standoffish, a source of rumour and romance and colour but not danger.

Or so his neighbours thought.

When the dark man first arrived in Addersby Court, it was a phenomenon that excited very little notice or interest. It was Christmas time, after all, and there was neither a shopkeeper nor a householder not up to their elbows in business or preparations for the holiday. The tobacconist took the money he slid across the counter for a pouch of brightleaf and a package of rolling papers without even looking up for a glance at his face. The haberdasher who sold him a new band for his hat answered his questions about the bookseller's hours without a thought, coming as they did from such a well-dressed, well-spoken gentleman. Those who thought about it guessed him by his looks to be a Spaniard, which was simultaneously so close to the truth and yet so far from it that it was almost laughable. A minor expenditure from his vast reserves of personal charm loosened the tongues of every gossip on the Street, particularly the women, and through such sources he collected sufficient intelligence as to confirm his suspicions: the reclusive bookseller was the man he'd been searching for. Then, as quickly as he'd come and before anyone could think to become concerned by the direction of his queries, he disappeared again from their society – or, at least, one face of him did. No one drew the connection between the elegantly well-spoken Spanish fellow who'd come round asking questions and the rougher, somewhat threadbare around the elbows fellow who came round looking to pick up some work which, given the season, the Court's shopkeepers were quite willing to provide, even if they thought him a gypsy and underpaid accordingly. He could, and did, more than make it up at cards.

He took a room in the cheapest of the Court's lodging houses and for several weeks thereafter simply watched his objective, which he could afford for the time being, and considered his options. He watched as the Bookman, utterly oblivious to his presence, went about the routines of the life he had built for himself, alone and well outside the boundaries of the Order's remaining ability to protect him. The shop opened promptly at seven o'clock every morning without fail and closed its doors at that same hour in the evening. In between, a vast amount of correspondence was delivered ("From all the quarters of the compass, I tell you, and places I've never heard of before – if I didn't know better, I'd think him a damned insurrectionist.") and a not inconsiderable volume of correspondence went back out ("Where the devil is 'Komui,' anyway, Rumania? Oh, wait, that might be the fellow's name…"); driving the mail cart for the carrier, whose rheumatic joints bothered him in the cold, he got a good look at most of it, unmarked by any official signs or seals beyond the personal stamp he used, a quill on the darkest red wax to be had. Wednesday was tutoring day and one could observe through the front windows at least a half-dozen youngsters labouring over lap-boards and ink-stained copy-books for the best part of the morning. Stock resupply arrived on Tuesdays and new merchandise Thursdays, which generally resulted in a good bit of business on Friday as many of the Square's residents turned out to ogle, even if they didn't buy anything. Otherwise, the custom tended to fluctuate unpredictably, whole days passing without a shopper crossing the threshold followed by days spent attending the needs of parish purchasing agents and wealthy individuals of leisure with money to waste on expensive stationery imported from the Orient and books of dubious improvement value. As the holiday drew closer, those sorts of customers became more consistent visitors, departing with presents wrapped in paper stamped with the quill-sigil at all hours of the day.

Just walking through the front door at the moment seemed not to be the best of ideas. Or even through the back door. The Bookman never seemed to sleep, or even leave his business/domicile for any significant length of time. If the lamps burning inside where any indication, he rose early, usually well before dawn, and retired late; his oil bills must have been horrendous. The proprietor of the local grocery came by every week to take his order and delivered provisions accordingly. Coal for the stoves and oil for the lamps arrived at regular intervals. He didn't go to church, any church, an unusual state of affairs and one of the few genuine black marks his neighbours had down against him. He posted every notice for skating-parties or carolling outings or charitable organizations brought to his door, but never seemed inclined to take part. It was odd, considering what he knew of the man. Or at least the man he'd been seven years before.

Two days before Christmas, the dirty but at least hard-working gypsy that had appeared in Addersby Court collected the last of his wages, paid the last of his rent, and disappeared. The only people who noticed were the ones that appreciated his strong back or wished he'd hung about for one more game, as he was decent enough company and rarely hustled the same fool twice.

No one on Addersby Court knew, or even suspected, that the Christmas season was the Bookman's least favourite time of year, a week and more book-ended in holidays that were, for him, more a trial of endurance than a time of joy or peace. He never let on in any significant way: the shop was properly decorated with evergreen and holly, a sprig of mistletoe over the door and a hideously clashing pomegranate wreath on it, a basket of hothouse fruit and plates of pastries scattered about for customers and visitors to sample from as they wished. He returned Christmas greetings every time he got them. He still received a polite share of invitations for dinners and wassails that no one expected him to attend and everyone had long since ceased to be offended by his own polite refusals. Most of the unmarried girls who hoped he'd marry them when he first arrived were wives and mothers now, and he doted on their children with small presents he kept in a basket behind his desk, handing out dozens of shichi-fuku-jin dolls and painted paper carp kites and little boxes of exotic sweets over the years. He accepted the little gifts they offered him in return and made good use of them, too: the contents of all those cordial bottles helped him sleep through the latter half of December, when he dared close his eyes at all, and otherwise filled out the baskets he sent to Komui and River on their birthdays. He made a point of taking down his decorations at the stroke of midnight on the New Year and made a merry Hogmanay bonfire of them in the burn-barrel out back, in honour of General Cross, who never recovered from his Scottishness in any serious way.

January 2nd was, every year, a sort of relief for him.

It was also the traditional start of the winter slow-down in his business. Oh, certainly, the usual suspects showed up without fail on Fridays to peruse the new merchandise and purchase their naughty Eastern block-print books in plain brown wrappers but, in general, he could usually count on January and February and occasionally even March to barely even pay for groceries. If he owed anyone a mortgage payment, he'd be in dire straits, indeed. As it stood, he invariably ended up dipping into his rainy-day-or-the-seashore fund for one thing or another and spending more time on his own writing than anything else during the drear days of deepest winter, which were never as desolate for him as the days leading up to Allen's birthday. Occasionally he could even lose himself in it, like he'd been able to before, hours drifting by in the scratch of the pen on the paper, in words and tiny margin illustrations, without even a sense of time passing beyond the need to turn the lamp higher. He wrote, for the most part, about the past – the distant past – translating portions of the Archive left to languish in obscurity for decades or centuries and inserting modern annotations, sorting myth from fact and offering evidence-and-observation supported clarification of his predecessors' findings. He'd filled four monographs of colourful historical commentary thus far and, thus far, Komui hadn't pressed him for anything more than that, and the work he did for the Order in identifying young accommodators and shooing them in the right direction.

Occasionally, of his own recognizance, he would bring out another book, its leather binding dyed black, stamped on its cover and its spine with the silver rosen kreuz of the Black Order, its fine pages almost unmarked. He would open its cover and read what he'd written in it, thus far, and pick up his pen to write more. And, after a sentence or two, he would put his pen back down, feeling like the resident of an Andersen fable and every word like a knife's edge, and close it again. He was beginning to suspect that there were some things that he would never be far enough away from to write about in the manner his office dictated. Neutrally. Without favour or bias. He was the Bookman, after all, and he owed the future at least that much.

That was what Ravi told himself as he sat staring at the blank pages opened before him on his desk, pinned down at the corners by paperweights and decorated around the margins in an artful little repeating pattern of flowers and cruciform leaves. He had made, as a part of his annual burning of the decorations festivities yesterday morning, a resolution: that this would be the year that he conquered both inertia and self-pity and finally wrote the damned thing. He would do it now, while he had both the time and the opportunity and the absence of distractions to get in the way of progress. It had been seven years. There was no excuse not to beyond sheer procrastination at this point, he could admit that frankly to himself, even if the knowledge didn't put a single extra word on the page. He had sat down that morning with every righteous intention in the world, with his pens laid out and a fresh pot of ink to hand for them, with the stove that kept the shop warm and dry filled and set to burn slow, with his desk-lamp full of oil and a fresh wick that wouldn't need trimming. And he hadn't managed to write a word all day. He couldn't even blame it on customers – there hadn't been a one. No, instead he did a perfectly wonderful job of distracting himself with the need for fresh, hot tea and some biscuits and discovering that half the poetry section was out of order and that he really ought to take down all those old notices and that there were still fallen evergreen needles and withered holly leaves hiding in a few corners. Here it was, five to closing, and all he had to show for himself was a pretty border decoration that, true to form, his capacity for doing nothing productive really wanted to paint with some of those nice coloured inks and perhaps a bit of that gold foil left over from embossing book spines. In the back of his mind, he could hear exactly what Panda would have been saying to him at that moment, and it wasn't pleasant.

"Tomorrow. There's always tomorrow." In the sense that there was, at some unspecified point in the future, a time when he might actually overcome his own reluctance to put pen to paper and get the thing done, once and for all. He rather doubted it would actually be 'tomorrow.'

With a sigh, he rose to put out the shop lamps and bank the shop's stove for the evening and, at that very instant, the bell above the door rang and a breath of icy air curling around the bookcases screening his desk from the draft announced the entrance of a customer. It was five minutes past seven.

"I'm very sorry," He began and found the rest of the words he'd been about to speak coming to a halt on his tongue as he stepped around the case and caught sight of his visitor. He hadn't, it seemed, changed much since the last time Ravi saw him: still tall (of course he was, it wasn't as though he'd shrink, it wasn't as though he'd be physically diminished by defeat or failure), still slender (though the breadth of his shoulders hinted at the strength he could bring to bear if necessary), still impeccably dressed (black layered over black, immaculately white gloves, hat set just right to conceal the Mark across his forehead), still dusky of skin and dark of hair. He stood with one hand still on the doorknob and the other on the head of the cane he carried, but didn't need, some dark wood polished to a high gloss and fitted with silver. Smiling. Ravi still had nightmares from time to time about that smile, and the last place he saw it.

Wolf-golden eyes regarded him over top a pair of smoked glass spectacles, crinkled slightly at the corners in what appeared to be genuine amusement. "I know – it's past hours. But I rather thought you wouldn't appreciate a call in the middle of the work day."

For what felt like a horribly long moment, Ravi could think of absolutely nothing to say in response to that. Nor could he convince his limbs to move despite the parts of his mind that, even then, were shaking off the dust of several years of disuse and shouting suggestions involving Odzuchi Kodzuchi and assorted vigorous applications that it could be put to, more or less immediately. Then, with an inner sensation like oil applied to half-rusted machinery, instincts that he'd nearly allowed to atrophy completely lurched back to life, patterns of thinking and planning and doing. Yes, it was after business hours, if only just. Outside, the Street was mostly empty of shoppers; of the merchants on the Square, his shop was one of the latest closers, the establishments most likely to draw a substantial crowd closed their shutters and doors with the sunset, having made their money during the busiest parts of the day. Most of his neighbours were, at this hour, sitting down to supper, or to glasses of Port and a pipe by the fire, or putting their young children to bed, or any number of other activities that didn't deserve to be interrupted by bolts of heavenly fire or a massive local earthquake or giant serpents forged of fire and molten iron. Or, for that matter, a swarm of butterflies that enjoyed dining on human flesh.

"That was…very civilized of you." He reached around the bookcase and took hold of Odzuchi Kodzuchi's hilt, hammerhead reshaped into a credible imitation of a cane handle. "To what do I owe the honour? Business or pleasure?"

"Business, I assure you." His visitor reached up and removed his spectacles, folding them neatly and tucking them away inside his coat.

"Well, then," Ravi replied, as evenly as he could through the sudden dryness of his mouth, "Shall we take a walk?"

His visitor regarded him steadily for a moment, then his shoulders lifted in a slight shrug. "If you like."

"I'll get my coat."

It was one of the old style, forced on him by River the last time he was at the motherhouse despite his general preference for something shorter, part of a uniform lot that was about to be permanently retired to storage. The Science Division had, in deference to his wishes, made it over slightly: none of the white trim could be removed, of course, but the ornate silver buttons had been replaced with horn toggles and the rozen kreuz carefully picked out stitch by stitch so that not even a hint of it remained over his heart. Nonetheless, it was armour that covered him from neck to knees and kept the cold out admirably besides. His visitor watched from the door as he lowered the stove's air intake and doused the lamps, then held it for him in a perfectly courtly manner as they stepped outside together, into the teeth of a January wind that whipped their clothing around them and immediately drove knives of frost into his weak leg for good measure. He leant heavily on Odzuchi Kodzuchi's handle until the worst of the twinges passed, and considered which way would be the best to go by, which streets would be least busy at this time of day and in this abominable weather, while his guest waited patiently at his shoulder. Close enough, point in fact, to put an end to their business in a single motion as they made their way through every back alley and disreputable side-street that Ravi could think of between Addersby Court and the Marble Arch, of which there were plenty. Halfway to the Park, it began to sleet, the wind driving the weather into their faces and forcing his companion to fall back a step to keep hold on his hat and, with his attention thus temporarily distracted, Ravi whispered, "Grow."

Beneath his gloved hand, Odzuchi Kodzuchi shifted slightly, reshaping itself subtly, becoming less hiltlike and more hammerlike with each whispered instruction.

Under any normal circumstance, Oxford Street leading to the north-eastern entrance of Hyde Park would have been lined in itinerant vendors at that hour of the evening, selling everything from penny glasses of hot elderberry wine or spiked peppermint water, to roast potatoes or steamed oysters of dubious freshness. Street tarts regularly retailed themselves in the circles of light beneath the gas-fed streetlamps, with a dozen or more loiterers of untrustworthy nature and a constable or two making certain nothing too illegal went on added to the mixture. Fortunately, the circumstances weren't all that normal, and even the homeless wretches who gathered outside the park's entrance begging charity were nowhere in evidence, much less the usual rogue's gallery. The temperature was dropping by the minute and the wind stiffening likewise, pelting the streets and everyone foolish enough to be out on them with sleet and half-frozen rain – which, in this case, meant himself and his companion, the rest of the street being empty as far as the eye could see. Ravi found that a completely satisfactory state of affairs given the situation. Inside the Park's gates, a few feeble lights burned: guttering fires contained in barrels, around which huddled a bare handful of the Park's most destitute residents trying to eke out enough warmth to keep body and soul together, those too mad or enfeebled or ill to find a place even at the most charitable work-house, even on a night this raw. Beyond that was darkness, illuminated only by the half-full moon peeking in and out through the fast-flying clouds, shining on the snow lying thick across the Park's open expanses and the ice riming the Serpentine. The uneven, unpaved path was a treacherous mess of melted and refrozen muddy slush and fresh-fallen ice that made walking alone something of an adventure.

"You know," Ravi observed as they walked deeper into the Park, each word emerging in an explosive puff of frozen vapour, "I rather thought you were dead."

"I was fairly certain that you did," His companion admitted, easily enough, "since, in order to suspect otherwise, you'd have to be me."

"To be perfectly honest," Ravi continued, ambling slowly in the direction of the Serpentine bridge, Odzuchi Kodzuchi's tip ringing with a sound not unlike steel striking stone as it tapped across the hard-frozen ground, "I also rather hoped that you were."

"Yes, I imagined that you would." A certain wry amusement came and went in his companion's voice. "I promise you, I'm not offended."

"Decent of you, that." Ravi cast a glance over his shoulder and found his visitor standing a respectful distance back, one hand still holding his hat in place, golden eyes shining in the dark like a cat's. "Shall we settle our business now?"

Behind them, the Serpentine reared out of its bed with the roar of a dozen cannon firing simultaneously as the death-cold water surged upward against the dictates of both common sense and gravity, inches-thick sheets of ice cracking and splintering, spraying the path with fragments as long and sharp as spears. Ravi shifted his grip on Odzuchi Kodzuchi, fingers winding around its hilt, extended to the length and thickness of a sturdy shepherd's staff, light-and-dark banded hammerhead glowing the same pale blue-silver hue as the moonlight on the snow as he silently invoked its true power. Wood Scripture bent the revoltingly polluted substance of the Serpentine to his will, roiled it into a churning column a dozen yards high that swayed on its axis like a cobra readying to strike.

"Wait." A single white-gloved hand came up. "This actually isn't the sort of business I had in mind."

"Really?" Ravi smiled tightly. "I'm afraid that's entirely too bad."

The Serpentine crashed down with earth-shaking force, churning the path where Tyki Mick was standing into a mass of mud, knife-edged fragments of shattered ice, stinking water one step removed from an open sewer and every nasty thing dredged up off the lake-bottom by the inexorable suction. It swirled for a moment in place, lapping around Ravi's ankles and the roots of a dozen unlucky trees ringing that section of the path, then surged back into its bed with a roar that drowned out even the wind, dragging its own befouled mass and nearly everything a foot and more down on the path back, notwithstanding a handful of shallowly-rooted saplings. Mud, ice, water, twisted around itself in a percolating maelstrom, surging upward again long enough to batter the bridge to flinders, adding lengths of shattered wood and metal and masonry to the mixture, rising upward into that swaying, twisting column and smashing back down again and again and again. It was a substance near to the consistency of unset concrete that came to rest in the lake basin by the time he was done, dotted with bits of barely recognizable wreckage no bigger than a large man's hand.

Ravi stood alone, gasping for breath, on the scythed-clean pathway, leaning heavily on Odzuchi Kodzuchi for support. The Noah assassin was nowhere to be seen – which, admittedly, didn't mean much as it could have, were he an ordinary man. Either he'd been caught by the water or he hadn't; he could be dead, but Ravi somehow doubted it, even if the Wood Scripture's control of the Serpentine had disrupted his own ability to ignore unfavourable physical realities. Likely, the bastard wasn't more than annoyed. He hefted his hammer and began a secondary invocation.

An ice-cold pair of hands closed around his ankles and yanked his feet out from under him.

For a single, startled instant, he hung in midair, arms wind-milling in an effort to catch his balance. Then gravity reasserted itself and the length of his body connected hard with the frozen ground, knocking every bit of breath out of his lungs and setting off an impressive fireworks display of pain-flashes before his eyes. He didn't lose his grip on the hammer, but it was only just – his elbow slammed down painfully and at just the right angle on a sharp bit of rock to force his fingers half-open. A sensation passed through him, like warm oil being poured across his chest and stomach, and those same cold, strong hands caught his wrists, forced his arms down and above his head despite his best efforts at resistance, the leverage brought to bear against him too great to overcome. As his vision cleared, he realized why: the Noah had come up from beneath him, through both the ground and his body, and was pinioning him at a disturbingly intimate distance, solid enough to hold him down, immaterial enough to be emerging from his own chest in order to do it, faces less than an inch apart.

Ravi wished he had enough moisture in his mouth to spit.

"Bookman," The Noah's breath was coming in ragged, frosty gasps, "unless you want us both to die a rather disgusting and memorable death, I suggest you release the invocation."

He glared up and tightened his grip on Odzuchi Kodzuchi's hilt. The Noah, for all the world, looked perfectly exasperated for a moment – then closed his own grip tightly enough to grind bones together, exerted crushing force on tendons, prised the hand wrapped around the hammer open. Odzuchi Kodzuchi fell off his desperately struggling fingertips with a ringing steely clatter and the luminescence of the invocation guttered and died, leaving them in near-absolute darkness.

"Much better," The Noah's tone was almost relieved. "Now…are you prepared to listen? And talk like a civilized human being?"

Ravi brought his head up as hard and fast as he could, and connected with an extremely satisfying thud of impact. Or, rather, it was satisfying for the six seconds before that impact made itself felt inside his own head, as well. A second round of fireworks went off before his eyes, a round that the Noah appeared to be enjoying as well from the tone of his swearing, and the bone-crushing grip slackened just enough to allow resistance. Ravi squirmed, twisted, wrenched his aching arm free and clawed for his weapon's hilt.

The Noah caught him by the hair and slammed his head into the ground, once, twice, thrice, in rapid succession. Odzuchi Kodzuchi's hilt was under his hand, but his skull was ringing so hard there was nothing he could do about it, great bursts of darkness exploding before his eyes and the whole of the world swirling around him like water draining down a pipe. He realized, with a sickening lurch, that he was on the verge of losing consciousness and tried to claw his way back from that edge.

"No," The Noah observed, in a tone that bore a passing resemblance to regret. "I see that you aren't."

Impacts four, five, and six finished battering his remaining fragments of awareness to incoherent bits, and the seventh rendered him down into a darkness he was rather certain he wouldn't return from. His final thought, as his grip on consciousness slipped, was a quiet one: he would never finish the book, and there would be none after him to do so.

The next morning, the bookseller's shop at Number Fourteen Cogman Street, Addersby Court, did not open at seven o'clock, for the first time in the living memory of the neighbourhood.


	2. A Separate Peace

**The Southern Uplands of Scotland, 3 January 18—**

Dambarrow-by-the-Water was an Aberdeenshire parish and village like nearly any other: small in a way that Englishmen tended to describe as "charmingly provincial" by which they meant "not really worth building a summer-house in no matter how cheap the land might be," afflicted with the common number of churches (three, two of which were Protestant), a handful of industries (the majority of which revolved around the production and consumption of alcohol), and the usual assortment of homes, shops, and flocks of sheep, distinguished from its neighbours to the north and south by only two things. (Three if you counted the train stop, which almost no one did.) The first of those things was the Dambarrow Water itself, a brackish expanse that welled up from some place deep below the moor on which it lay just outside the town proper, cold and dark and deep as a sinner's heart in the centre, reedy fen about the deceptively irregular shore. (It was famous, locally, for having swallowed entire the first Christian church built in the parish, priest included, seven centuries before and no small number of drunkards, unwary sheep, and assorted luckless passers-by since.) The second was the enormous monastery brooding on the crag at the head of the valley, looking for all the world like something plucked out of the pages of some hideous penny-dreadful, all unwelcoming dark stone walls studded with statuary that didn't bear close examination and intermittently illuminated arrow-slit windows with dark figures darting past them and the occasional sound of deep-throated chanting in a language that was probably Latin echoing across the moors when the wind was right. (The motherhouse's protective façade had, in fact, been constructed, partially destroyed, and then reconstructed according to the dubious tastes of assorted members of the Science Division who, rather than pick one design schema and stick with it, had instead incorporated everyone's most deranged suggestions into a single repellent whole. Since the intent was to keep anyone with the aesthetic, or common, sense of a post away, it succeeded marvellously.) As a consequence of the Water's unsavoury reputation, and the unsightly pseudo-Gothic monstrosity blighting the view, the town of Dambarrow was spared the horrible fate of its neighbours in the spring-and-summer-time, which fate consisted principally of being beset by Englishmen with one Scots great-great-grandmother poncing about the moors in their "clan plaids," quoting Burns in atrocious accents and attempting to order whisky at the local taverns in the same. The folk of Dambarrow, as a result, were quite kindly disposed toward their neighbours on the hill, no matter how oddly they dressed, or behaved, or at what hours they came or went in their jet-black train, and even went so far as to run off anyone too foolish to be discouraged by the Order's own measures.

For the first forty years or so after the motherhouse's initial construction, the Order – more formally and properly known as the Black Order of Knights-Exorcist of the United Kingdom and the Colonies, of Europa, of Africa, of the Russias and the Orient – offered the people of Dambarrow no other visible benefits of association. They could not, even had they wished to, by the strictures of the Rule they adhered to as a function of their duties. They never truly knew their neighbours – the sorrows and the joys of the very people they were prepared to sacrifice themselves to protect. They could not, for to draw too close would bring danger to everyone's door.

But their neighbours knew them. They knew the Black Order for decades by the oblates who arrived on the train stop platform children and left it again men and women, clad in black and white with silver crosses over their hearts, armed for battle in ways that were not always easy to see. They knew the Black Order by the ones who came home weary in body and soul, wounded in the same, and smelling still of smoky battlefields and strange scents that were neither blood nor oil but a disturbing admixture of both. They knew the Black Order by the ones who returned in black-lacquered caskets, guarded and carried by silent, cassocked attendants who never showed their faces, or spoke unless they had to. And they knew, when the War broke upon the Continent – a War, so the newspapers all said, of monsters that wore human flesh, that had slaughtered thousands and tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands, and had been stopped by forces unknown – they knew who had ended that War, if not how. The Black Order's fallen began their final journey in the town below their last home, after all, and as the news had spread from mouth to ear, the folk of Dambarrow had turned out to stand silent vigil as the Order took back its last sacrifice.

There hadn't been many of them, but, in the end, there had been enough. Enough to spare the world a scourging such as it had not felt since the Flood itself. Enough to save mankind, no matter how unworthy mankind might be of the price paid to ransom it, yet again, from its most ancient and implacable enemy. Five black caskets. Four strapped more dead than alive to hospital gurneys. One older man and one younger man bent with the weight of their grief. After that day, the people of Dambarrow saw none of them again, but neither did they forget, and a more fitting memorial could not have been asked.

Some months after the passage of the last of the Black Order's fallen, a message came to the parish Kirk, and shortly thereafter, the priest approached the mayor and the council, and some small time beyond that, ground was broken at the edge of town. Unlike the motherhouse, the school was the product of saner architectural impulses, a rambling, welcoming two-story structure with one wing for the housing and education of boys and one wing for the housing and education of girls, its walls of sturdy red brick and its roof of good slate, its dormitories models of modern comfort and hygiene, its dining-hall locally reputed to be somewhat better than even London's famed supper-clubs, its classrooms designed according to the standards of those who considered learning a joy rather than a chore or a punishment, its library stuffed to the rafters with a collection startling for its depth and breadth. The children of Dambarrow were invited to attend, and, once the suspicions concerning the potential for Papist Indoctrination of Our Impressionable Youth were dispersed by the indication that said indoctrination would be both free of charge and wholly secular in nature, the first classes were sat. Shortly thereafter, more students began to arrive, first as a trickle and then as a steady flood, aboard the Order's jet-black train, to take up residence and begin their education. Many of them came from Abroad, and spoke with rather odd accents, when they spoke English at all, though this was less trouble than it might have been, for most of the teachers themselves were rather far-travelled and schooled in a number of languages. Friendships among the children grew slowly but fast. That was generally construed, by the members of the Order who taught them, to be quite a fitting memorial, as well.

It was from their children that the folk of Dambarrow learned that the alien brood dwelling among them, colouring their little town with strange clothing and odd accents and unfamiliar holidays, were the sons and daughters and brothers and sisters of the fallen knights of the Black Order. It was from their children that they learned the name and some of the deeds of the smiling white-haired boy whose portrait hung behind the headmaster's desk and in such a way did the place become known forever thereafter as the Walker School, despite its official designation which was significantly longer and contained at least one completely gratuitous reference to Saint Scholastica. When news of this development reached the headmaster, he shook his head and was heard to mutter, "I've lived too long, to be holding forth over a school called after my own idiot apprentice. Somewhere, he's laughing at me."

Which, all things being equal, wasn't the worst way to be remembered, either.

As a child, River Wendham was a walking bundle of distinctly unchildlike worries. In the summer, he worried about wading in the invitingly warm waters of the sea any deeper than his ankles for fear of being eaten by a shark or other similarly large and non-discriminatory predator with a taste for human flesh. In the winter, when his parents moved their small family into the countryside in the pursuit of their work as natural scientists, he worried about fetching water from the creek-sides on the fairly reasonable grounds that, among other things, crocodiles tended to favour those particular banks. As with the seaside, his concern was fuelled by a certain desire to avoid being eaten by a large, non-discriminatory predator that would have absolutely no difficulty masticating his relatively soft bones. At all times of the year, he worried about being stung by scorpions or spiders or bitten by snakes, as his prodigious intellect and habit of becoming easily bored with the standard curricular readings he was required to complete had led him, early in his life, to sneak a look at his parents' working observational journals when they weren't about to stop him which, in turn, had led him to the conclusion that all the wildlife in Australia was either ridiculously, dangerously poisonous or possibly inclined to eat him, including his own younger siblings.

His parents, whose lives' work revolved around establishing close and personal relations with creatures of a particularly poisonous, predatory, and non-discriminatory nature, didn't realize the role their own research had played in their eldest son's decision to study chemistry rather than biology.

(They were, however, extremely pleased that he had chosen to pursue advanced degrees in the sciences, and even more pleased when he graduated, at the top of his class, from the storied institution at which he had studied. Somewhat less pleasing to them was his completely inexplicable decision, some years later, to abandon a promising career in the research sciences to run off to England with the most deranged of his University friends to take a position with, of all things, the Church. Not even a Church school, but some ridiculous variation of nearly Holy Orders, a cloistered, shuttered existence, locked away from the intellectually stimulating world of the burgeoning scientific community in his homeland. If they'd had an address to send letters to, the correspondence would have flowed like a mighty river, no pun at all intended, despite the fact that he had instructed him not to attempt to contact him in the same letter he'd used to inform them of his decision. They received no more letters from him themselves for nearly ten years.)

Working with potentially explosive chemicals for the better part of both his formal education and his professional life had long since cured River of most of his early childhood nervousness and, in fact, there was very little now that could disturb his disposition, which tended in the direction of unflappability. (In fact, had he remained in any way inclined toward an anxious personality condition, working with Komui Li and his propensity for building robots vulnerable to caffeine-fuelled psychosis on a regular basis would have rid him of it or driven him barking to Bedlam, with Bedlam displaying a slightly higher percentage of probability. Komui certainly had that effect on more than one lab assistant.) One thing that was, however, certain to result in quite a bit of disturbance in his placid demeanour was being woken at decidedly godless hours of the morning by violence being committed against the door to his quarters. Apparently by someone wearing brass knuckles.

"I'm awake, I'm awake – " And had, again, fallen asleep alone with the bedside lamp burning, surrounded in masses of scientific trade journals forwarded to him by his parents, overjoyed to hear from him again. "Just a moment!" The floor on his side of the room was, at least, uncluttered – unfortunately, clutter might have ameliorated some of the discomfort of hopping across largely uncarpeted flagstones in the dead of winter, especially since his slippers had gone missing some time before. "BerightthereGAH!"

Night-watch was the domain of the junior officers of the Science Division and the one they'd sent to wake him was the most junior of them all, so fresh that River didn't even know his name yet. He recoiled almost comically away from the door as it popped open and River hopped out, transferring his weight from foot to foot in a desperate effort to avoid frostbite. "What is it…Harrison?"

"Harrington, sir. General's respects and will you join him in the containment oversight level?" That one must have been recruited from some military source; he kept looking like he wanted to salute.

"Of course. Tell him I'll be along presently once I've – wait. Containment oversight? What's been going on?" River reached just inside the door, fished about for a moment, and pulled a pair of Komui's rattier old house slippers off the coat-rack, which rarely actually held any coats. "I thought I felt a tremor earlier, but I wasn't sure."

"I'm afraid that's why I was asked to get you, Chief. No-one rightly knows just yet." Harrington also had the sense to sound more than vaguely worried about that, a position with which River could absolutely sympathise.

Over the years, most of the residents of the motherhouse had grown accustomed to any number of oddities far stranger than the Chief of Operations stalking through the halls in the dead of night still clad in his night-shirt and dressing-gown, trailing a rosy-cheeked junior officer in his wake, and so that sight excited no comment from anyone. Assorted night-owls poked their heads out their doors to ask what was going on, only to be peremptorily shooed back to their beds and told not to worry, an admonition that, coming from River, carried more than its usual weight. Legendary competence and composure tended to have that effect even on high-strung adolescent exorcists and easily alarmed Science Division personnel alike, the numbers of which grew somewhat larger the further they descended into the lower reaches of the motherhouse, where lay Hebraska's quarters and, by necessity, the containment cell that sheltered the most precious relic in the Black Order's possession lay.

Very few people outside the Order knew that the hill upon which the motherhouse had been built was not a natural feature of the landscape, and within the Order the precise details of the situation were restricted to a knowledgeable handful. The Order itself hadn't known, when it first acquired the parcel of land: the most attractive feature, point in fact, had been its relative seclusion, far enough away from major human habitation to minimise any danger to bystanders, close enough to modern modes of transit that response time wasn't unacceptably compromised. The remnants of older structures on the site – shallow foundations, the rubble that remained of old walls and defensive fortifications – were a curiosity, and little more, until the excavation for the motherhouse's foundation broke completely through the false crust of the hill and into the space beneath. Within, layers of cut stone walls created a vast, galleried space, and in forty years, the Order still hadn't finished exploring it all, though they had adapted parts of it for usage. The transit watercourse connected to the lowest level they'd thus far found, and small, flat-bottomed skiffs came and went at all hours, for a multitude of purposes. Above that lay the tombs in which the ashes of the Order's fallen were interred behind the black marble plaques that bore their names. In the very centre of the massive edifice, buried deep and protected by the enormous mass of the retaining walls that held the hill's shape, was the chamber where the Order's most reclusive member, the Guardian of the Prophecy, slept in waiting for the coming of each new exorcist, nurturing the hope of the world within her own supernatural flesh.

Viewed from above, from the deck of the observational platform built across the vast central shaft of the hill, the Heart of All Innocence shone with a milky iridescence, protectively encased as it was within the nacreous coils of Hebraska's massive, largely immobile body. She seemed, from where River was standing, to still be asleep, or at least not agitated enough to move since the last time he saw her, much earlier in the day. Neither had the Heart's steady, constant glow appeared to have altered, or at least not enough to be visible to the naked eye.

"Chief!"

River stretched his legs and met Johnny half-way to the central observation platform, plucking the sheaf of papers he was waving around out of his hand and glancing through them quickly. "What's happening? Using small words and diagrams. And get me an elderberry fizz, I can't think with my blood sugar this low."

"We were performing routine observations at midnight. Hebraska was asleep, as always. The Heart started to resonate – you know, like it did before? – in a series of six short bursts, two minutes apart." River came to a halt, looked more closely at the mess of papers, and found small words and diagrams in plenty. "It's continued to do so every hour for the last three. Hebraska hasn't come out of her hibernation, but her vital signs are beginning to show indications of quickening. The General wanted to consult you before we made any decisions."

They were on the platform and an elderberry fizz manifested itself for him in the hand of General Komui Li, who looked like he'd been indulging in his own intoxicant of choice, the intensely black stuff he imported from Istanbul at ludicrous expense. "I'm sorry to drag you out of bed, River, but I rather thought you wouldn't want to hear about this over breakfast."

River snorted, sucked down a sip of fizz, and gestured out over the edge of the platform. "This started up apropos of nothing, I assume? No experiments in process of which I would have to formally disapprove in my capacity as Chief of Operations?"

Komui opened his eyes to their widest and most innocent-seeming extent. "I'm wounded. You know if I were going to do something completely insane I'd recruit you to help – ah – formally ask your permission first. But, no. No experiments. I was in my office, catching up on that mountain of backed-up paperwork that you left for me, when the Officer of the Watch," Johnny waved over his shoulder, and went back to scribbling as fast as he could write on a fresh sheet of paper, "buzzed my wireless and asked me to come down to confirm his observations. Which were correct. The Heart, metaphorically speaking, was beating a bit faster than normal, as you can see by the graphical plot. Energy output increased slightly, as well. Then it stopped, and then started again. If you felt the building shake a bit, it's because Hebraska shifted a little in her sleep."

River handed his cup back. "More sugar." The small words and diagrams in the report began to arrange themselves into a coherent series of numbers and letters, and he found his eyebrows migrating in the direction of his hairline. "Komui, some of these peaks aren't minor. Have we received any trouble calls from the patrol units on the Continent?"

"Nothing. I sent out an all-call to check in and thus far all the responses we've received have indicated no trouble. The stationary listening posts have reported all quiet. I even woke Bak up, and he was rather surly about it, too. But Asia Branch reports all clear." A pause. "I haven't called Miranda or Rinali or Ravi yet."

"We probably should," River accepted a second cup and sipped at it thoughtfully. "They might have sensed something that our instruments wouldn't be able to detect."

"…Perhaps." Komui's reluctance was clearly audible and River cocked a questioning brow at him; normally, there was very little that could dissuade him from harassing his sister, including her clearly expressed wishes. "It's not Twelfth Night yet. Rina…"

"…Would really appreciate being accosted even less than usual." Softly, "I'm sorry, I…almost forgot. Let's put in a call to Miranda, and she can decide whether or not she wants to involve Rinali now or later. Ravi, too, though I suspect if he noticed anything, he'd contact us first."

"Perhaps." Komui reached for one of the wireless golems hanging batlike from the platform railing. "Perhaps not."

Twelve-tide began at sunset on Christmas night and, even on the war-torn, death-haunted Continent, they were the twelve merriest days on the calendar in every nation under the Saviour's cross. In the kingdoms and principalities and duchies of the west, the traditional celebrations had taken on a far more altruistic than sybaritic character: little in evidence were the grand, nearly bacchanal fetes of wasteful self-indulgence that had excited so much condemnation from the pens of conscientious social investigators in the years before the War. Benevolent relief organizations of all stripes saw their numbers and funds swell during that twelve-day, allowing a far greater range of charity to be spread among a far greater range of sufferers. Even before the War, poverty and want were not strangers even in the richest cities of France, of Spain, of the Low Countries; after it, those cities groaned under the weight of both the native poor and the need to succour the tens of thousands of destitute refugees the tides of violence washed across their borders. Economies had crumbled. Crowns and thrones had been lost, whole governments had collapsed beneath the strain. And help had come from unexpected quarters, help clad in black and white and silver, carrying weapons forged by the hand of God and letters of credit signed by His earthly representatives, skilled in a hundred different trades and willing to put their knowledge to use. The Black Order carried the imprimatur and the authority of the Vatican to do what it must to maintain civility and order in the wavering western lands, and focused its mission through traditional routes: the communities of the Catholic faithful and the organizational powers they could bring to bear. The New World Alliance, its secular orientation more palatable to the nation-builders in the cradle of the Enlightenment, had in their turn approached the worldly governors with offers of financial and logistical support, offers which even the proudest regents eventually found it prudent to accept. Slowly, and not without effort, the nations of the west edged back from the brink of disastrous collapse, and on the twelve-night of Christmas-tide they gave thanks for their good fortune in the free giving of food and drink, clothing and money, gainful employment and a good roof above the heads of the poorest among them. Every man, woman, and child among them knew it for the grace of God and the courage of men that they had not suffered the fate of so many others.

In the lands that had, until recently, been the Holy Roman Empire and points to the East, the recovery had not yet significantly begun, and yet even there Twelve-tide was a time for joy and thanksgiving. Riven by supernatural warfare, the heart of Old Europe lay broken into a hundred petty states – pugnaciously sovereign republics modelled on revolutionary ideals, free cities struggling against the tide of restorationist sentiment to retain that status, isolated enclaves of humanity fighting to reach the level of barely medieval – and yet they each and every one held those days sacred as a time of peace in the midst of slowly receding horror. Famine and Pestilence, War's vile handmaidens, had taken their share, as well, and yet in every republic, in every free city, in every ruin and refugee camp, the people still gathered to offer thanks to the birth of the world's hope and give each other what comfort they could, sheltered beneath the protection of those who walked their borders and slew the things that would destroy not just them but all of mankind if they could. Feral akuma, bereft of the malignant will and malevolent intelligence that had guided them to war, haunted the mountains and forests and valleys of the Continent, shackled to their own instinctual imperatives: to perfect themselves into weapons of mass destruction, and to use themselves to wipe the grievous insult of defective, worthless humanity from the face of the Earth. The Black Order, its numbers once cruelly depleted, had grown again to meet the continuing threat, only barely diminished by the defeat of its author. And even they, humanity's black-clad protectors, paused in those days to give their thanks.

Sister Rinali Li, wherever she was at the time, kept the season according to her own custom and admitted very little change to that custom, unless the situation were truly dire. She had observed it in the ruins of Magdeburg at the altar of the cathedral of St. Maurice while around her a running battle commanded by her sister-in-arms, General Lotte, had raged and shook what was left of the cathedral walls. (She broke her observance that twelve-night to purify four highly evolved akuma herself, in defence of the two hundred women and children that had taken shelter in the cathedral with her; she rather thought that the objects of her devotion would have approved, even if the Prince of Peace did not.) She had observed it in the chapel tent of the enormous refugee camp south of Frankfurt am Main while around her the camp's residents came and went, offering their own devotions, their own candles and flowers and whispered prayers to the rough-hewn altar and the cross set behind it. She had observed it, faithfully, for the last three years in the chapel of the refurbished monastic complex where she and General Lotte were stationed as semi-permanent staff, she as a teacher in the orphan's asylum and Miranda as the trainer-commander of the Order's forces in the region.

By day, she kept her schedule in the asylum's classrooms, teaching science and mathematics to Magyar boys (who were, in general, quite pleased to have a pretty young woman – albeit a crippled one – as their instructor in such subjects) and girls (who were, in general, quite surprised to have a woman teaching them such subjects at all) and the occasional suspicious adult (who generally questioned her competence in her fields and who always went away some combination of flustered, convinced, and faintly intimidated). During the late afternoon, after classes had ended for the day, she took some small portion of rest and nourishment, though never enough to satisfy the overprotective attendants who laboured perpetually under the delusion that she used herself too severely during the Twelve-tide. An hour before sunset, she rose and, with the aid of one of the novices of the Black Order's civilian auxiliary, the Order of the Holy Merciful Saviour, bathed and dressed herself in the plain black habit of that organization. Chaoji, her Finder-attendant-bodyguard for the best part of a decade, would then make his usual almost ritual fuss over her, making certain that her habit was pinned to her short-cropped hair firmly enough to resist the stiffest winter wind and that the woollen blanket she wore tucked over her cruelly withered legs wouldn't catch on anything, and then he would wheel her in her chair to the chapel by the monastery's covered walkways to keep her even further from the cold. Once there, he would fetch and carry as she required, bringing the candles upon which she would write the names of those whom she remembered on those nights, bringing oil with which to anoint them and matches with which to light them, and then he would sit in a pew at her elbow while she whispered Our Father and Hail Mary and Glory Be to the Father and Hail, Holy Queen, Mother of Mercy and every word of the Litany of the Blessed Virgin Mary as the candle burned slowly down. When she was done, and she had no more ritual words of prayer to offer, she would sit, and watch the fire dwindle away to a tiny curl of smoke, and the sunrise behind the chapel's lovely stained glass windows, but she would not close her eyes, no matter that she was weary in body and soul and mind. She mourned, but she had wept all her tears long ago, and the fury of her grief had made ashes of what had been left of her heart. (In the twelve days between Allen's birthday and the Feast of the Epiphany, she could barely close her eyes without dreaming, and her dreams on those days she dreaded more than anything else in the world or what waited beyond it.) During Twelve-tide, no one disturbed her in those devotions for reasons less than life or death, out of respect for that sorrow. It therefore came as something of a surprise when, early on the morning of the Feast of the Holy Name, a disturbance did, indeed, occur.

It lacked a few hours until dawn when the sound reached them where they sat, Chaoji in the chapel's first pew and Rinali in her wheeled chair next to him, running the ebony beads of her rosary across her palm, though she was no longer counting prayers. Her Finder had dosed off sometime after midnight, but came instantly awake when she laid her hand on his shoulder, and they turned as one to face the door. Footsteps were coming down the corridor at a rapid clip, hard-soled boots or shoes ringing on the worn flagstones rather than the whisper-soft tread of the resident chaplain's night-slippers as he came to say the early-morning Offices. Without even a perfunctory knock, the door flew open and a young man clad in the white uniform of a Science Division officer stepped inside, breathing heavily; he had obviously come at a run, and had been chased out of bed rather peremptorily by the way his hair was jutting off his skull in gravity-defying spirals, his clothing clearly having been buttoned while he was still too asleep to make straight lines. He did, however, make a very pretty bow to her by way of apology for his interruption and addressed his remarks to the floor, possibly in the hopes of avoiding being killed for the temerity.

"General Lotte's regrets, Lady Rina, and would you please join her in the infirmary?"

Rinali turned her chair quickly and wheeled herself up the aisle, Chaoji following close behind. "General Lotte isn't injured, is she? I wasn't aware that she was going out on patrol tonight."

"No! Oh, no. The General is fine." He straightened up and smoothed his hair back out of his face. "It's one of the younger parasite-types – OW!"

"I'm sorry," Rinali shouted from down the hall, as Chaoji supported the hopping, whimpering scientist out after her, holding his wheel-dented foot well off the floor. "Chaoji, make sure nothing's broken, will you?"

"Lady Rina!"

The complex infirmary was, fortunately, on the ground floor and did not require the somewhat problematic navigation of any staircases, though several of the halls were uncomfortably narrow and required her to pull herself along using the walls rather than the rails on her chair's wheels. Originally constructed in the thirteenth century, intended to be as much a fortress as a house of God, the monastery could only be modernized so far; most of the corridors in the oldest parts of the building weren't wide enough for two men to walk abreast. The infirmary, located just off those corridors, was however a much newer construction, built since the Black Order had acquired the property according to the standards laid out by the Science Division: open, roomy wards with plenty of windows to admit light and air and all of the most modern advances in medical technology and hygiene, only the best for the Order and its dependents. In the case of this particular chapter house, the infirmary serviced the needs of three mobile exorcist teams, one stationary exorcist team, and three hundred and six orphans, slightly more girls than boys, and approximately one third of which were accommodators themselves, exorcists-in-waiting. Almost half of those, contrary to statistics and the Black Order's past experiences with such things, were the previously exceeding rare parasite-type accommodators, the "naturals" born with the blessings of God and the power of their Innocence literally incarnate. Of those, Rinali could only think of one whose condition was such that Miranda might feel it necessary to interrupt her annual hermitage.

"Illes!" Rinali wheeled herself swiftly into the portion of the infirmary set aside for the use of the children, divided into individual "rooms" by pale green curtains, each containing a comfortable bed, a dresser for clothing, and a parasite-type child accommodator whose body had not yet adjusted to the awakening of his or her gift. At the moment, there were six, four girls and two boys.

General Lotte stepped out of the "room" at the far end of the ward, like her hapless assistant looking very much as though she had been roused without a great deal of notice, clad in her pyjamas and a dressing gown, curly dark hair pulled back in a haphazard attempt at a loose bun. "Rina…Forgive me. I wouldn't have called you, but he none of us could soothe him, and he kept asking for you."

"I understand." Miranda held the curtain aside for her and Rinali came to the side of the bed, where the youngest of her charges lay.

The vast majority of all parasite-types did not manifest their abilities until later in life, not infrequently at the onset of puberty or extremely close to it, once their bodies had begun attaining something approaching physical maturity, the emergence of their Innocence's power being only one more organic stress among many. Adolescence – fraught thought it otherwise was with emotional turmoil and physical awkwardness – was at least ideal in that regard. More rarely, a dormant parasite-type would manifest in adulthood, the Innocence sleeping within them responding to a threat or a trauma; even more rarely, the Innocence would awaken in early childhood. In both of those cases, the physical and psychological toll was different, and in many ways higher: adults typically had great difficulty adjusting their images of themselves, formed over a lifetime, and the alienists employed by the Black Order spent a great deal of time assisting in that adjustment; children tended toward physical fragility, vulnerability to illness and injury and slow to heal from both, until they reached adolescence and sometimes beyond. It was little wonder that parents, hard-pressed for mere survival in the plague-desolate, akuma-haunted East, would balk at the demands caring for such a child placed on them.

Illes Temesvari was, as near as anyone could tell, somewhat less than seven years old and easily the youngest active parasite-type accommodator in the history of the Black Order, a fact more or less confirmed by the researches of the Bookman on the subject. He had been abandoned in the vestibule of the monastery during a late-February blizzard, without even a blanket, though whoever had left him had, at least, pounded on the door to attract the attention of the night-watch, who brought him inside and to the infirmary. That was closing in on two years ago, and he hadn't left the infirmary since, being confined to his bed by several factors: the frailty of his body (he was slight in every way, a good hand-span shorter than all the other boys his age and many of the girls, as well, so light that a strong breeze probably could have blown him over on a bad day), his propensity for terrifyingly high fevers whenever he took a cold, and, the unkindest of all the cuts he'd suffered in his short life, the activation of his Innocence, which remained beyond his control, had rendered him physically blind. His Innocence sat in the very centre of his forehead, a jet-black cruciform rendered even more conspicuous by the milk-white skin upon which it was symbiotically joined, the eyes below it filmed over in lambent green radiance that obscured their natural colour completely. He recognized others by the sound of their voices, the size of their hands, for his eyes looked forever on sights that no one else could perceive and even he only understood, at best, part of the time.

Tonight, he lay twisted up in his sheets and blankets, pale cheeks flushed with fever, mouse-brown hair plastered to his skull by the sweat of it, and his eyes shining brightly enough that Rinali had to raise her hand to block out the glow. She fumbled about for a moment in the covers, found his own, smaller fingers, and gasped softly at the heat of them. "Illes? Can you hear me?"

Miranda stepped in behind her and pulled the curtains closed, waving off the ward nurse for the time being. "He was calling for you earlier. I'm sorry I didn't summon you sooner now."

"You needn't apologize, Miranda." Rinali reached over and rested her hand over Illes' eyes; he didn't so much as flinch from her touch. "How long has he been this way?"

"He began showing signs of the fever early in the evening, just after sunset, from what the ward nurse told me. He was rather active earlier in the day as I understand it." The older woman handed her a sheaf of foolscap from the top of the dresser, bending down to scoop up the pastel sticks she had knocked to the floor. "He was even out of bed in the solarium for a few hours."

Rinali took the pictures, clearly the work of her charge's hand. Despite his lack of physical sight and his youth, he was a startlingly competent artist, his gift granting him the ability to communicate his visions in such a way when he lacked the words and the experience to verbally describe what he was seeing. General Theodore, on his last visit, had given the boy a huge book of loose foolscap sheets and two boxes of pastels and, since then, he had produced dozens of drawings, most of which had been forwarded to the motherhouse for analysis by the Science Division. While Illes, in general, tended toward the abstract a good bit of the time, these drawings were quite the opposite: a very pretty repeating pattern of golden curlicue vines and delicately pink-tinted cruciform flowers, on a background that had been first collared the yellowish hue of fine parchment paper; a moon peering through thick grey clouds, shining on a snow-covered path, an expanse of rippling dark water, richly coloured in a blend of blues and blacks; a man's angular profile executed in blood red and stark black and faint silver tracery.

Her hand shook uncontrollably for a moment and when she looked up, she found her thoughts etched on Miranda's careworn face. "Ravi. He saw Ravi?"

Against her palm, Illes' eyelashes fluttered like the wings of tiny butterflies. "Ri…na."

Rinali laid the pictures down and Miranda came to join her at the bedside, bringing a cool, damp cloth from the lavabo to wash his face with. "I'm here, Illes. Can you hear me?" She accepted the cloth and stroked it over his cheeks, across his sweat-beaded forehead. The light from his eyes had perceptibly dimmed, the activation waning if not releasing its hold completely.

He "looked" toward the sound of her voice, his tiny face a mask of anguish so intense it twisted her heart. "Ri…na. Help…"

"I'm here, my love. Tell me what you need." Miranda took back the cloth and put a cup with a bent glass straw in her hand; she put it to his lips and he gratefully drank three deep gulps of water.

"You have to help him, Rina." A little mouse-whisper, soft and feverish. "He's hurt. I saw him."

"You were just dreaming, my love. Not everything you see is a real vision." Or, at the very least, that was the general presumption advanced by the Science Division; in this case, she devoutly hoped it was true. "And, even if it was, the man you saw is a grown-up who can take care of himself. He doesn't need any help from you or from me."

"No." Illes shook his head furiously for a moment then stopped, visibly dizzy. "He does. They both do. He told me to tell you that you have to help them."

"Who told you that?" Rinali set the cup aside and took his hand in her own; he was still worryingly hot, and with her free hand she gestured for Miranda to summon the nurse.

"I don't know. I've never heard his voice before. But he told me to tell you." His eyes drifted half-closed. "I'm tired, Rina."

"Then go to sleep. I'll have the nurse mix you a draught, if you like." The face he made in response to that suggestion was pure comedy, so she laughed at it for his sake. "I'll take that as a 'no.' Here, have a little more water…"

He drank, and the ward nurse poked her head through the gap in the curtains. "I beg your pardon, General Lotte, Lady Rina, but there's a call on the wireless for the General. It's from Home."

"I'd best take it then." Miranda rested a hand on her shoulder in passing. "Rina, do you want to stay? Very well, I'll have your duties reassigned for today. Do you think we should forward the pictures…?"

"Yes. If only to be sure." She handed them over, frankly glad to be rid of them of a sudden.

"Rina." Softly. "What if Ravi is really…?"

She felt her mouth tightening into a hard, thin line, and forced it to relax, forced her hand not to clench so tightly on the cup she held. "If the Bookman is really in danger, there are a hundred and more exorcists closer to his help than we are right now."

Miranda looked, for a moment, as though she very much wanted to say something else but, finally, she simply nodded, collected the papers, and stepped out in a swirl of dressing-gown and curtains. Rinali breathed deeply several times to encourage the cold fury knotting her belly to let go, and turned back to her charge. In his sleep, he looked far, far too young, too dear, too vulnerable; if anyone, he needed her help and her protection far more. She told herself that, and by the time the sun crept above the horizon, she had pushed any other thoughts, any other concerns, no matter how persistent and niggling, from her mind. After a time, she slept, with her head pillowed on her arms at the edge of Illes' sickbed, and dreamt dreams she hadn't in a very long time: dreams of a white haired boy with fierce and gentle silver eyes. When she woke, her face was wet with tears.

"Still no answer from the Bookman, General. Shall I try again?"

"…No. If he doesn't want to be bothered, we won't bother him. Leave a message with his wireless to call us when he has the opportunity."


	3. Business, Not Pleasure

**London, England 3 January 18—**

It was axiomatic, amongst learned historians and scholars of all stripes, that London was not so much a single large city as a collection of hundreds of small towns, each with their own unique character, their own ancestral hatreds preserved intact from one generation to the next, and their own local customs and habits, both exemplary and vile. The West End, for example, was, by the fiat of both tradition and the ridiculous sums of money required to afford the smallest and meanest of homes there, the abode of the nobility, by birth or by fortune self-made; the mansions and palaces of barons and merchant princes gazed haughtily over the rest of the city from the boroughs of royal Kensington, Piccadilly's exclusive gardens, the genteel streets of Belgravia and Tyburnia. By way of contrast, the East End was the address given to crushing poverty, to whole neighbourhoods whose sole industries were crime and vice, where the destitute crammed cheek to jowl in the midst of the unimaginable moral squalor of Whitechapel, the proud but irretrievable insolvency of Bethnal Green, the den of petty thievery and low commerce that was Saffron Hill. Addersby Square was, like many another region of the city, neither an address beloved to the fine ladies and gentlemen of fashion nor a cesspool of ignorance and abject poverty populated by the desperate, but something quite thoroughly in the middle. Its residents were, generally, working-people of decent, law-abiding trades – greengrocers and shopkeepers, haberdashers and apothecaries, factory-men and maidservants for hire – and its buildings a somewhat disorganized mixture of private residences, shops with their owners' flats over top them, and manufactories of various sorts that supplied those shops with goods to sell and no few of the inhabitants with their livelihoods. The income thus provided allowed the vast majority of the Square's populace to live in a state of sufficiency if not surfeit, enough to keep food on their tables and clothes on their backs, a roof over their heads and a sum set aside for holidays and the schooling of the children.

Even so, it was always prudent to save money where one could, and one of those ways involved the choice of the children's schooling. For those children whose parents expected great things of them, the family would scrape and save and work long hours to pay the entry fees to the Merchant Taylors' School or the Highgate School and to purchase the books and pens and apparel that their children would need to succeed in such an environment. Those children whose parents expected them to follow the family trade oft found themselves ensconced in the hallowed environs of the City of London School, where a hard-working boy could earn himself a scholarship to help defray the cost of his education. There were none on the Square poor enough to have to send their children to Ragged Schools to learn their letters and numbers, but there were a goodly number whose means stretched to accommodate either an educational fee or an educationally sufficient wardrobe or course-books and materials but not all of them at once. It was these children who formed the majority of the Bookman's students, the young men and women with parents of modest means and a willingness to come to terms with him. He offered, in essence, the same curriculum as the City School, but in miniature: instruction in Languages (English, French, German, Latin, Greek, and a number of far stranger offerings for those who showed both the ability and the interest; a startling number of young people on Cogman Street could read and speak a Hindi dialect, or a tongue from even further East), Arithmetic (though the Bookman was known to employ a series of young women freshly graduated from their own certificate schools to that purpose, as maths were easily his least favourite subject), Book-keeping (the same), Geography (his youthful travels proved to be quite a boon in that regard), Writing (at which he was much better than lecturing betimes), and History (a topic on which he forced himself not to hold forth for hours beyond his audience's interest on a regular basis). For that, he charged less than half per annum than the City School and, moreover, had no dress-code to which the students must adhere and was entirely willing to lend them their course-books out of his stock. Best yet, he was willing to take his fee in trade if hard currency was running short in a season, accepting clothing repairs and grocery donations and the occasional bit of labour about his own shop in lieu of silver.

As a consequence, his neighbourhood clients were exceedingly loyal and even somewhat protective of him and his well-being, going so far as to bring him pots of soup on the rare occasions he was feeling under the weather and being the most persistent about trying to draw him out of his solitary existence. Monsieur and Madame Bellmaine, the Square's resident haberdasher and seamstress, respectively, were particularly attached to him, and not solely because he was educating all three of their daughters for the price of a pair of new shirts a year and all the collar-buttons he could go through. (Though they certainly wouldn't have minded if he'd succumb to the allure of Celeste or Sophie, though Esme was, as of yet, a bit too young to be considering such arrangements.) He not only spoke French, he spoke it flawlessly and without the slightest trace of abominable British accent, and both the Bellmaines made every excuse they could to pay him a visit for the purposes of chatting with him in their mother tongue. It was they, in fact, who noticed that Number Fourteen's shop-lights remained darkened long after the usual opening hour, even though the lamps in the flat upstairs continued to burn. They nonetheless sent forth their daughters, the three Mademoiselles Bellmaine, at the appointed hour, to join the small cluster of other students gathering on the walk in front of Number Fourteen. It was unusual, but not unheard of, for the Bookman to open his shop late from time to time, but he had, in the seven years of his residence, never missed a Wednesday morning schooling session.

By a quarter after the hour, the children were still waiting, and the senior Bellmaines were watching the proceedings from the window of their shop, directly across the street from the bookseller's own.

"Do you suppose he could be ill?" Madame Bellmaine asked her husband, somewhat anxiously. "He was very pale when I spoke to him last week. He did not, in fact, seem himself at all."

Had her husband been a more jealous man, he might have been disturbed by that remark; as it was, he simply tended to agree with it. "I noticed it as well. When I suggested that he might see a physician, he told me he simply wasn't sleeping well." Monsieur Bellmaine watched the tallest and slenderest of his daughters standing on her toes in an effort to see over the forest of old notices posted to the lowest panes of the bookseller's picture-window. "It is, I think, the time of year."

"True, true. The winter doesn't seem to agree with him." The senior Bellmaines were, to be certain, hopeless romantics and between them they had concocted a few of the more wildly improbable theories about their neighbour, where he had come from and why he had joined their little society and what horrible tragedy had led him to eschew the sweet comforts of love and family. Some of their guesses were, as a result, rather astonishingly close to the truth. "Perhaps we should go knock…? It's bitter outside, after all."

"You stay here – it wouldn't do for you to catch a chill, my heart." Monsieur Bellmaine fetched his hat and his coat, and pulled on his gloves as he hurried across the street, where the children had begun to huddle together as much out of the wind as they could.

"The front and back doors are still locked, Papa," Celeste informed him, from her place screened behind two of the taller boys, who gallantly lent their bodies to the effort to keeping the girls and the younger boys out of the full blast of the wind. "We tried knocking at the back, in case he was in the store-room, but no one answered."

"Children, take shelter in my shop. It is far too cold to stand outside." The entire mass moved almost as one, scurrying across the street, coattails and scarves flying. An experimental series of knocks produced no response whatsoever from the interior of the shop and a quick check of the door-knob showed that the lock was, indeed, still engaged. Now considerably disturbed, Monsieur Bellmaine circled round the back of the building to the medievally narrow alleyway that ran along that side of the Street. The bookseller's delivery entrance was located there, painted the same vivid green as his front door, but equipped with something the front door lacked: a bell-cord, by which means the proprietor's attention could be drawn no matter where he might be in the building. The Bookman had, some time before, shown him where it was and how it could be used in the event of an emergency; Monsieur Bellmaine gave it three good tugs now, and stepped close to the door, laying his ear practically against the wood as he waited for some response. In this, his persistence was rewarded: inside, he heard the sound of footsteps, a hollow echo at first, as though they were coming down the stairs, growing louder as they came nearer, through the back of the building. The latches on the rear door locks scraped loudly as they disengaged and Monsieur Bellmaine stepped back, perfectly prepared to offer expressions of felicitation and concern to his neighbour.

It was not, however, his neighbour who answered the summons. The man who opened the door was, in fact, a good hand span taller and a not inconsiderable degree darker: darker of hair, darker of skin, clad all in black but for the flawless snowy white of his shirt. He stood in the door as though he owned it, his unexpected presence a thing of nearly physical intimidation; Monsieur Bellmaine reflexively retreated back a step or two away from it, and nearly bumped against the opposite wall of the alley as he did so. A pair of eyes of a decidedly startling and unnatural hue caught him and held him: golden as autumn sunshine, and cold, colder than that colour had any right to be. "May I help you?"

For an instant, Monsieur Bellmaine could think of absolutely nothing to say to that, trapped as he was by those eyes: he was reminded of great stalking cats gliding through darkened forests and serpents coiled sleepily on sunlit rocks and both waiting for something foolish to come along that they could eat. He swallowed, with some difficulty, and croaked, "I…beg your pardon. Is the proprietor in this morning?" He somehow felt that he shouldn't say his neighbour's name to this creature, remembering certain fairy tales about the power held in such things. "His students were waiting and I – "

"Oh." Something about him changed, something subtle but evident; Monsieur Bellmaine felt it like the difference in the air after a storm, after all the lightning had flashed and all the rain fallen and there was no more thunder left to dread. "My apologies. It's been something of a long night. I'm afraid that the Bookman is…indisposed at the moment. I expect he won't be up to teaching today. If you would be so kind as to tell his students, I'm certain he would appreciate it."

"Indisposed? Is he ill? Should I summon a physician?" He didn't quite dare ask to be let in to see his neighbour – he had the feeling that making such a request would be deeply unwise.

"No, I don't think that will be necessary." A thin smile curled the stranger's mouth, and Monsieur Bellmaine suddenly remembered where he had seen it before: beneath a pair of smoked glass spectacles that had hidden those uncanny, startling eyes, as it asked about the bookseller's hours some days before Christmas. "And thank you again for all your help, Monsieur."

The door slammed in his face, and, inside, the bolts of the locks shot home again.

'Indisposed,' he had decided long ago, was one of the finest words in the English language, admirably imprecise and capable of being stretched to cover nearly any eventuality. Too hung-over to move without risking the safety of the carpet, the bedclothes, and your shoes, much less engage in rational thought? Indisposed. Gasping out your last breaths and writhing in agony as someone extracts large and important bits of your circulatory system without anaesthesia? Indisposed. Tied unconscious to the sturdy wooden frame of your own bed, with lengths of your own undarned woollen socks, because you couldn't bring yourself to engage in civilized conversation for a few minutes? Indisposed. Tyki Mick desperately wished to be indisposed himself at that moment. He longed to be intimately personally acquainted with blissful senselessness again whilst sprawled carelessly upon some suitably horizontal surface, preferably a well-padded one. Unfortunately, it seemed as though the world was intent upon arranging circumstances to thwart and mock him in that regard. His head was throbbing in a manner that suggested strongly his skull had been the victim of considerable malfeasance involving sadistic garden trolls or possibly the malevolent ghosts of his least-favourite cousins, sledgehammers, and red-hot railway spikes. The pain was, in fact, so intense that it had overflowed his cranium and oozed down his neck, across his shoulders, and along the length of his spine, inflicting itself thereby upon every portion of his body containing nervous connexions, which was to say, all of them. It was even sufficient to stop him concentrating well enough to exercise his favourite cure for minor physical aches – a brief, palliative period of insubstantiality could sort nearly anything out in that regard – but wasn't quite enough to either knock him unconscious again or kill him mercifully outright.

"I knew I should have thrown that damned hammer in the Serpentine." It took a great deal more of his will than it should have just to push himself away from the door and getting himself all the way up the back stairs into the Bookman's flat was simply a trial of endurance that he didn't dare fail. (For one thing, falling down any portion of stairs anywhere and breaking his neck was not particularly on his agenda on any day of the week. But, then, nearly being pummelled to death by a supernaturally animate watercourse hadn't been on the agenda for the night prior, either, and so it was fairly clear that he'd have to keep his schedule flexible in his dealings with this man.) He came over the top step into the narrow little hall that linked the rooms of the flat together on his hands and knees, head feeling as though someone had poured molten lead in his ears on the way up, rendering it far too heavy to lift as well as incandescently painful. He crawled the rest of the way down the hall to the bedroom and collapsed cheek-down on the uncarpeted floor, trying to cast his gaze around as best he could without moving his head more than he must. Ah, there it was.

The Bookman's hammer had, upon his abrupt and involuntary loss of consciousness in Hyde Park, reverted to a rather more portable size, looking like nothing so much as a toy walnut-cracker small enough to fit in the palm of one hand. Extracting himself from both the frozen ground and his assailant's recumbent body, he had heroically throttled his foremost instinctual impulse – to snatch the nasty thing up and reduce it to a fine black powder – on the grounds that such an act on his part couldn't really be cast as any sort of good faith gesture, whereas leaving it in one piece could, no matter how much they wanted to destroy one another. Instead, he had wrapped it up in his damp muffler and stuffed it into the pocket of his coat, slung the Bookman's decidedly unresponsive weight over his shoulder, and staggered to the Marble Arch, where he was at least able to flag down a passing hansom. The driver had made vaguely concerned noises about the upholstery of the seats and he had made noises of a conciliatory character concerning the non-alcoholic nature of his friend's debility and those, along with a fairly sizeable tip in advance, got the immobile Bookman heaved aboard the cab and then heaved back off once they arrived at his shop. Fortunately, by then, it was a good deal closer to midnight than any other hour, and the decent, upstanding folk of Addersby Court were all snug abed, so there were no witnesses to the spectacle of one remarkably solid-looking man dragging another remarkably solid-looking man through the front door of Number Fourteen without first troubling to open it.

It occurred to him, from his retrospective position on the bedroom floor, that that was when it had started, as a needle-sharp pain in his temples, and it he'd been less out of sorts at that moment, he might have thought about it harder. As it was, his thoughts and actions had primarily revolved around getting the prevailing unhelpfully senseless exorcist up the stairs and out of his wet coat and boots (because going to all this trouble only to have him die of cold or shock would have been the perfect end to a wretched day) and then getting him suitably restrained (because sometimes safe was a good deal better than sorry, and he was rather beginning to think that this was one of those times). The Bookman's flat was a pestilentially bachelorish affair completely devoid of the sort of tastefully elegant creature comforts that one might find in apartments decorated by, for example, a sister or a close female friend: four rooms (kitchen, bath, study, and bedroom), containing precisely two comfortable pieces of furniture (the bed and the study chair), and an assortment of other detritus that probably needed to be dusted, washed and organized far more often than it actually was. Perversely, he felt immediately at home, shucked off his own coat, fed up the bedroom fireplace, stripped the cushions off the study chair, used them and the bed-pillows to prop his erstwhile host/captive up into a semi-sitting position against the headboard, and bound his wrists to the railing thereof, using sailor's knots he'd learned how to tie in the misty recesses of his misspent youth. The Bookman hadn't stirred: his pulse was strong and his breathing steady but he was cold probably to the bone, and Tyki had found a pair of extra blankets to tuck around him until the room finished warming, and a towel to wrap around his wet hair. Then, feeling more than a little chilled and weary himself, he'd stepped into the kitchen to fix a pot of tea. He'd been drawing the water for it when the sound had caught his attention: an odd, piercing noise that had gone straight through his head and reminded him how much it was aching, not unlike the sound a fine crystal goblet would make if it were struck hard enough to make it ring but not hard enough to break.

He'd followed it back to the source, the coat he'd left hanging to dry next to the bedroom fireplace, and had extracted the muffler-wrapped bundle from his pocket. It didn't remember, quite, touching the thing itself, nor did he recall actually impacting with the wall opposite the fireplace, though that was where he woke, slumped dazed and aching all over, when the door-bell had rung. The malevolent little walnut-cracker must have flown from his hand, because it had taken up residence among the dust-balls and stray stockings beneath the Bookman's bed, the Innocence-spike atop it glowering as balefully as a thing lacking eyes could. Moving with exaggerated care for the sake of his head, Tyki belly-crawled across the bedroom floor, selected one of the stray pieces of hosiery to act as a defence mechanism, and fished the thing out from under the bed with said piece of hosiery between his skin and the hammer's hilt. Pinching it between thumb and forefinger, he held the thing up to eye-level and addressed it as respectfully as he could, given the circumstances. "I think we're going to have to come to an accommodation, you and I. How's this: I promise I won't hurt him, if you cease the hurting of me. Beginning now. I think, if you consider the matter carefully, you'll find this an amicable enough arrangement for the time being, given that he couldn't pick you up now even if he wanted. Do we understand one another?"

For a half a minute, it felt as though his skull were being clamped in a red-hot vice – an involuntary sound of pain escaped his lips and he had to blink the tears out of his eyes – and then it slackened, pressure and pain both receding so quickly he nearly sobbed aloud at the relief. Slowly, the rest of his body stopped aching, as well. Very carefully, he sat himself up and, just as carefully, he set the walnut-cracker on the bed at the Bookman's side, where it winked darkly in the wan morning light making it past the bedroom window-blinds. "Thank you kindly. I think I'll make that tea now."

_All around him the world stretched away, grey from horizon to horizon, the grey of the land distinguishable from the grey of the sky only by variations in shade and depth. Overhead, the sky was the flat silvery grey of light reflecting from the surface of a finely polished steel blade, hard and cold and far too bright to look upon directly without causing oneself pain. The land was blessedly darker, an ink-painting executed with a fine and skilful hand against the painful brilliance of the sky, all subtle, layered washes of iron and smoke and London rain. Beneath his feet, the road was the colour of freshly laid bitumen and gritty as a crushed gravel pathway, inky pebbles of a substance that was not stone grinding to an even finer consistency beneath the heels of his boots, an ashy little cloud rising with every step he took. He suspected that he was in Hell, and it was one of his own making._

_His face was wet with tears, and he could not make himself stop weeping._

_He wondered how many of them there were making up that shadowy road stretching into the slowly darkening distance, how many and, against his will, who they were and where they had come from and how they had met their fates. Not why – he already knew 'why.' Why lay over his own heart, etched in silver, the sign by which the Soldiers of Life were known to their friends and their enemies alike. Why added the faint silvery sheen to the road beneath his feet, where the dust of untold hundreds, thousands, perhaps more stretched into the past behind him and as far as he could see ahead._

_He could almost hear their voices echoing in every step he took, whispering just below the level of audibility, thousands of voices speaking at once, words he did not have to hear in order to comprehend._

_How many? How many lay here, reduced to ash by the cleansing fires of the Order's priests, by the flesh-destroying weapons of the akuma? How many had gone to their deaths in the manner of their own choosing, grimly prepared to do what they must to allow the whole of mankind another hour of life, another day, another year? How many had not? How many had fallen, bitter and betrayed, in the knowledge that one they had trusted as a friend and ally had waited, hesitated, chosen not to act, one instant too long to save their lives?_

_Even one was too many, and there were far, far more than that.  
He walked, and his tears carved trails in the dust on his cheeks, walked until he could walk no more, until the grey nothing of the world faded wholly into darkness and grief became all that he knew._

Ravi came back to himself slowly, his chest still aching hollowly with the need to sob and the taste of his own tears on his lips. For a moment he wondered where he was and what fresh torment he was about to know; Hell, according to all his sources, tended toward rendering punishments to fit crimes, and there were in fact some particularly Eastern Hells with rather evocative names that he wasn't especially inclined to visit, no matter how appropriately they might address his own situation.

Somewhere, quite nearby, he could smell bread toasting and sausages browning in their own fat and tea brewing to a potency just below coffee. Another moment beyond that, he realized that he was, in fact, fully and completely alive, and in a not inconsiderable degree of discomfort. Something rough and faintly damp lay over his face, completely obscuring his view but for a certain sense of light and shadow, the distinct impression of heavy overcast, and even that amount of light was enough to make his eye sting and water. His head felt like an over-baked pot, one that had been smashed into quite a large number of bits and then pieced back together with a decidedly inferior grade of glue, and his neck was cricked at an angle incompatible with human contentment. Otherwise, he ached from the roots of his hair to the tips of his toes, numb in some spots and throbbing in others, and any attempt he made to move was thwarted by the fact that he was tucked quite firmly under far more blankets than he was really used to and that his arms were tied above and to each side of his head.

That realization served to quickly and efficiently sweep the last of the cobwebs from his aching head, though it didn't do anything in particular about the ache itself. The headboard squeaked like a stomped-upon rat and, from his perspective, made a horrific racket banging against the unpanelled brick of the bedroom wall as he yanked ineffectually at the bonds holding him; bonds which were, he realized, an odd mix of soft and pleasantly scratchy against his skin. His efforts produced no serious results; the bonds loosened not at all and his twisting and tugging served only to rub his skin raw at the tightest points of contact, his numb fingertips tingling from the sudden return of marginal circulation. Arching his back and digging in his heels and trying to work his shoulder-strength into the equation served only to jerk the bed back on its legs with another series of skull-splittingly high-pitched screeches; the bonds continued to serenely ignore his efforts at freeing himself. Nettled beyond endurance, he howled aloud, a virtually wordless sound comprised of equal parts pain and frustration. (The words that made their way into this utterance were all German, a language that he particularly employed for the purposes of swearing, for which it was uniquely suited.)

That produced a response; as he lay panting in the aftermath of his exclamation, a sound came to his ears: swift, light-footed steps on uncarpeted floorboards and, without warning, the object obstructing his vision was whisked away. The grey storm-light leaking through the window-blinds speared his eye without mercy and he yelped out loud, blinking helplessly against the involuntary rush of tearing blurring his vision.

"Here, let me help you with that." He froze in place at the sound of that voice, and held still long enough for the damp cloth, which he now recognized as one of his own bath-towels, to obscure his vision again as it dabbed at his face. "I'm sorry – I should have closed the blinds."

The towel whisked away again and Ravi found himself staring, thoroughly appalled, into the face of a man he knew to be personally responsible for the deaths of more than a hundred Finders, no less than six Exorcists, and at least one Exorcist General, who was now standing in the middle of his bedroom, towel in his hands, somewhat grease-splashed apron tied round him, smiling down at him with an air of deeply disturbing cheerfulness. He looked, Ravi thought, entirely too pleased with himself, as the memory of the previous evening came rushing back to account for all the aches, pains, and his current state of confinement. "What…the Hell…are you doing…?"

"Preparing your breakfast." The Noah snapped the towel he was holding out, folded it neatly in half, and tucked it into the collar of Ravi's shirt, very much to his consternation. "I'm afraid I took some liberties, but you were, unfortunately, completely senseless and the contents of your cupboards didn't offer very many clues. You're out of coffee, by the way." He lifted his head and sniffed the air. "In fact, I suspect the toast is burning. I'll be right back."

Ravi watched him recede down the hall leading to the kitchen, his brain at a complete and dumbstruck halt for the second time in as many days. His mind, in fact, continued to stand completely still for several moments thereafter; it could, after all, feel the world tilting ever so slightly beneath its feet and had no desire to fall howling into the sort of madness that the situation seemed to require to be accepted with equanimity. Down the hall, crockery rattled, a completely homely sound, contrasted bizarrely against the fact that he was tied to his own bed by, if his eye was not deceiving him, his own stockings. Odzuchi Kodzuchi's smallest form sat atop the blankets next to him on the bed and that fact filled him with a relief so complete his head nearly spun with the force of it. A somewhat dusty stocking appeared to be wrapped around its hilt. His boots had been placed neatly next to the bedroom fireplace, his coat hung likewise, sharing space with the Noah's own, and the fire itself was burning merrily, having clearly been fed by someone acquainted with the need for both lasting warmth and fuel economy. He rather wanted the sky to have turned purple or the sun to have turned green or some other vast and immediately noticeable natural phenomenon to have reversed itself completely as a proper external representation of the pure weirdness suddenly engulfing his little corner of the city. The sky beyond his window-blinds remained a fairly common threatening slate-grey, suggestive of more snow sometime in the immediate future, and the world serenely ignored his desperate desire for some indication that he had unexpectedly stepped into a reality not his own.

"I hope you haven't taken any silly vows concerning pork." The Noah announced, entering with a heavily laden bed-tray in his hands, which he deposited neatly over Ravi's blanketed lap. "Because nothing in this world will ever make me eat fish for breakfast again. Don't go anywhere, now, I'll get the tea."

He disappeared again down the hall. Ravi blinked stupidly down at the tray, which contained quite enough food for two, a half-dozen fried eggs, at least that many sausages, a towering stack of toast that must have constituted the best part of a freshly baked loaf of bread, a pair of quartered oranges, a little bowl of rich yellow butter, the glass honey-pot he used for tea. A pile of eating utensils and a pair of folded napkins occupied one corner. It smelled, he was compelled by his own native honesty to admit, more than merely edible, and his stomach rolled over and crossly reminded him that he hadn't eaten anything since those biscuits how long ago now and if the lunatic killer was going to feed him in advance of any further unpleasantness, he and his sanity could probably endure the distress. The Noah returned, tea-pot in one hand and a pair of his thick earthenware mugs in the other, which he set on the bedside table. He sat himself somewhat gingerly on the edge of the bed and, reaching into a pocket inside his vest, extracted a tiny envelope of waxed paper, the powdered contents of which he added to one of the mugs, along with a hearty dollop of honey and a measure of gently steaming tea, mixing the three together with one of the spoons. "There's no pleasant way to do this, Bookman. Open wide."

"What – " Ravi began, and found his mouth suddenly occupied by the rim of the mug; he swallowed, reflexively, to avoid drowning and fought not to gag: the honey and the strength of the tea could not quite disguise the bitterness of the additive. "What -- ?!"

"My sainted landlady's proprietary hangover cure, as compounded by the chemist down the Street. He's going to send his apprentice round with the bill later, by the way. You needn't actually be hung over to enjoy the beneficial properties of this medicament, fortunately, and if your headache is as terrible as mine was, you'll thank me for this later. Finish." Ravi could practically hear the little clef notes hanging in the air around those words and gagged down the last of the cup's contents around his desire to spit them all over his captor's immaculately white cuffs. "Goooooood, very, very good." He set the cup aside and, through a complex operation of hands, silverware, and foodstuffs, got a fried egg atop a piece of toast which he promptly began nibbling. "How do you feel this lovely morning? More inclined to listen to reason, I hope."

"Untie me," Ravi growled, "this instant."

"No. Absolutely no. A thousand times no." The Noah finished his egg-and-toast and prepared a second, which he held up with clear intent to entice. "I promised your walnut-cracker I wouldn't hurt you, if that helps any. Open."

"Wait. You talked to my weapon, you – " He had been about to say, 'you demented freak of human nature,' but a mouthful of perfectly fried egg and perfectly toasted bread interfered significantly with his elocution. He chewed and swallowed as rapidly as he could without choking. "You really are completely insane, aren't you?"

"Barking," The Noah agreed without the slightest trace of offence. "Believe me, if you'd found yourself related to half my family, you'd take comfort in the sweet consolations of madness, too. Here, have some more. I'm certain you'll feel a bit more civilized once you have a decent meal in you. Incidentally, your neighbours all think you need a wife and I find myself in total agreement with them. Your larder is absolutely appalling."

The Noah required him to consume three whole pieces of egg-and-toast and two sausages before he was willing to allow conversation of any sort not related to food to take place. For the duration of that time, Ravi forced himself not to think more than he must to accomplish the process of eating and observed as best he could, an endeavour significantly aided by his unwillingness to take his eye off his captor's rather dangerous hands. He knew entirely too well what harm those hands were capable of inflicting, promise or no promise, and how swiftly his mood could shift, from teasingly good-humoured to casually murderous at the flip of a coin. And he was more than slightly disturbed to have those hands feeding him breakfast as though he were an invalid and not a prisoner, while their owner kept up a steady stream of encouraging remarks, as though he were actually accustomed to administering meals to the only dubiously hungry. Of which, he was again forced by honesty to admit, he was not one; the Noah had certainly learned how to cook a good if simple meal somewhere. Between the food and the nasty hangover cure, he found his body suddenly quite willing to betray his righteous indignation, feeling as it was well-fed and with a considerably reduced number of aches to aggravate it; another cup of tea, this one far sweeter, completed the process of bringing about his physical surrender, despite his best efforts to maintain a foully disagreeable attitude about the whole affair.

"Better?" The Noah asked in a perfectly aggravating tone, a little smile lurking at the corners of his mouth, as he stacked up the empty dishes.

Ravi tried to glare, failed, and settled for rolling his eye heavenward in a silent plea for assistance, or at least mercy. "…Yes. Much better." He forced the words off his tongue and fought down the urge to spit afterwards. "Thank you."

"You're quite welcome." He moved the tray aside and, gingerly, picked up Odzuchi Kodzuchi by its stocking-wrapper and set it in his lap; then, very much to Ravi's surprise, he leant over and undid the ridiculously complex knots binding his wrists to the headboard. "There."

Ravi spent a moment working feeling back into his numb hands, and a moment more whimpering about the pins-and-needles doing so provoked all the way up to his elbows, wrapping the first to stop tingling around his weapon's hilt. It was, as nearly as he could determine, undamaged in any way, if a little dusty. He could not, however, bring himself to let it go. "…I seem to recall you saying something about business at some point last night."

"You recall correctly." The set of the Noah's shoulders changed slightly, some of the tension relaxing out of his posture as the possibility of immediately nasty goings-on subsided somewhat. "It's my understanding that you offer certain services in addition to the wares in the fine shop below us."

"I do," Ravi replied, somewhat warily, tapping Odzuchi Kodzuchi's flat against the tingling palm of his still semi-numb hand. "Though I frankly can't imagine what sort of professional service you might desire of me, in specific. You'll forgive me for thinking that your family likely has very little use for a translation service. Or formally notarised documents for that matter."

"My family isn't really an issue that need concern you in this case." Lightly said, but something lurked close beneath the surface of those words, something almost anxious, something the slightest bit troubled. "Of that you can be sure. I was, in fact, referring to your services as a tutor."

"A tutor…?" Ravi blinked. "For whom?" A horrible suspicion stole over him. "Not for that evil little – "

"Were my evil little sister alive," The Noah interjected coolly, "she would be nineteen years old and quite beyond anything you, or I for that matter, could possibly teach her. She is not. And your client would be me."

Several powerful and conflicting reactions flitted through Ravi's mind in the space of a few heartbeats. The foremost among them: what sort of condolences, precisely, were properly offered to a man whose younger sibling you had very likely assisted in killing and whose death you could not honestly say you regretted? Rhode Kamelot had been monstrous even by the rather liberal standards of the House of Noah, the favourite daughter of her family's foul benefactor, whose absolute detestation of the "inferior" breeds of mankind she had shared and, more, transformed into an obscene appetite for others' pain. She had, in all ways, been a girl too young to marry much less perish in a war engineered by her elders on the exterior alone; within, she was as much a wilful, willing agent of humanity's demise as any akuma. Just thinking of her made Ravi's skin want to crawl off his bones. The second fell off his lips without pausing for a moment to articulate itself in an even slightly diplomatic fashion. "What sort of fool do you take me for?"

"I beg your pardon?" The Noah graciously chose to ignore the lack of diplomacy, inclining a questioning eyebrow in response.

"You heard me. To borrow a phrase, if your evil little sister would be beyond anything I know, what could I possibly teach you?" A part of him wanted, very much, to invoke Odzuchi Kodzuchi while he had a good angle and hammer the bastard through the window; yes, it would make a horrible mess and, likely, force him to relocate, but if would also be oh so very satisfying to see the look on his face, if only for a moment.

"Oh. Well. As to that," The Noah looked, for the most fleeting of instants, perfectly and absolutely self-conscious, almost flustered, and Ravi's mouth snapped shut at the sight. "Reading. Writing. That sort of thing, you know? The basics. I'm afraid Geography would be quite wasted on me."

"…Are you telling me," Ravi asked, after a moment of intensely uncomfortable silence, "that you don't…that you've never…Are you serious?"

"Completely."

Ravi opened his mouth, closed it again on the grounds that is initial impulse could not be considered particularly diplomatic, realized that he had no desire to be diplomatic, and soldiered on. "You are aware that there are other schools in this city, correct? Charitable educational societies and such?"

"Entirely."

"So what, in the name of God, induced you to think that I would be in any way inclined to help you?" Ravi asked from between clenched teeth.

"Oh, well, as to that," The Noah shrugged, somewhat helplessly, and spread his hands. "I confess I had no delusions about your inclinations. You've no reason in this world to trust me, and for that I don't blame you at all. I can, however, think of one particularly excellent reason why you might wish to help me. I can, after all, pay you in a manner no one else could offer."

Ravi found himself fighting the urge to retreat to the corner of the bed furthest away from even the slightest physical contact with his unwelcome guest, sublimating the desire into a less extreme motion, folding himself into a cross-legged sitting position, straightening his spine. "I doubt that rather completely."

"Really? A seeker of Truth such as yourself absolutely couldn't imagine a thing I'd have to offer?" A wry look came and went on the Noah's face. "History, Bookman. I can give you history such as neither you nor any of your predecessors have ever had it."

Ravi blinked, again. "You can't be saying what I think you're saying. Doesn't your family have certain little rules about consorting in such ways with – "

"My family, as I said, is not an issue." Ravi got the distinct impression he was beginning to frustrate the Noah as much as the Noah was disturbing him. "The hidden history of the world, Bookman – the history of the House of Noah. It is, in large part," He tapped his temple with one perfectly manicured fingertip, "right here in me. I'll give you that in exchange for what you can teach me. I need to know how to read. I need to be able to write. Do you think we can come to a truce, you and I?"

"You're serious." Ravi whispered, shocked beyond measure.

"Earnestly. I assure you."

"I…think that this is…an offer that I can accept." In the back of his mind, he heard a thousand generations of Bookmen being mortally torn between rolling in their graves and egging him on, and shook his head firmly in an effort to banish the hallucination. "A…truce, then."

"Agreed." The Noah offered his hand, and glared pointedly at Odzuchi Kodzuchi. "And the same for that, if you don't mind."

"Very well, if you insist, I agree for both of us." Ravi gingerly took the Noah's hand: a well-kept hand, he couldn't help but notice, long-fingered and strong of grip, with just the slightest trace of callus, not entirely unlike his own. "When shall we start?"

"As soon as possible, if it pleases, though preferably not tonight." The Noah rose and collected the tray in one smooth motion. "I'm afraid I've business of my own to attend. Thursday?"

"Let's say Friday, in the late afternoon. Or Saturday night." Ravi replied, biting down firmly on the urge to ask about said business.

"Saturday night, then." A little smile lurked at the corners of the Noah's mouth. "I'll bring dinner. Oh, and Bookman? I cooked. I assure you, I'm not doing the dishes."

It took a special sort of person to survive, let alone thrive, within the precincts of Whitechapel, supposed even before the influx of hopeless, penniless refugees from the Continent to be easily the most dreadful region of London in which to dwell and, after, that supposition was confirmed in a hundred different tongues. Conscientious social investigators prowled the streets and squares and byways of the East End, wrote reports on the deplorable conditions they found there that were read and clucked over in every corner of the Empire and just as quickly forgotten, with a little shudder of relief that the reader was not one of the wretches thus described. Londoners were generally understood, by the rest of the country, to have sacrificed in whole or part the best portions of their human nature on the altar of mere Survival; city-life, it was thought, tended to erode over time the finer-feelings of the heart and soul, which was why so many city-dwellers who had the means fled that foul and stinking blight upon the face of the Earth for a nice summer-house in the countryside and left their affairs to the accountants and overseers at least part of the year. Those city-dwellers who had not the means of flight – in other words, the working men and women whose labour financed the sweet escapes of their betters and the poor struggling not to die in the streets – were not infrequently regarded with the same sort of horror offered a rabid beast and were in many quarters thought little better. When a typical English country squire imagined such a person – a man but one step removed from a beast, his woman a feral creature reeking of gin, their half-tamed litter of squalid brats – the odds were good that he had just finished reading an investigative publication concerning the East End of old London-Town, easily the worst place in the Empire, excepting not even the more heathenish bits of India.

In truth, the East End in general and Whitechapel in specific were not the sort of places one would choose to settle and rear a family, were there any actual choices involved in the circumstances that brought one within its borders. Refugees who had escaped the destruction that had overtaken their homelands with more than the clothes upon their backs or some saleable skill did not linger there long; they found work in London's ever-hungry market for cheap labour and moved to Camden-Town or Clerkenwell or Southwark, to congregate with others in their own trade; they provided their names and skills to the Ministry of Relocation and Recovery and accepted transportation to Australia, to India, to Palestine, to the West Indies, anywhere their hands were required to advance the causes of the Empire; they ingratiated themselves with charitable patrons and fled with their virtue lightly tarnished but otherwise intact. For those lacking in such fortune, the East End was all too willing to swallow them up and make thieves of them, or petty thugs, and whores of their wives or daughters, no matter what their circumstances might have been in their places of origin. For the locals, the Englishmen and women born and bred, it was little different, though at least they spoke the language.

Otherwise, the East End in general, and Whitechapel in specific, was a perfectly wonderful place to hide.

Tyki lived there long enough now that he could walk alone down streets that even the police wouldn't dare enter, dressed as though he had just come from a dinner-party in Mayfair, and not suffer an instant's molestation from the locals. They knew him, if not to a man then at least close to it, and those who were ignorant were quickly informed by their friends and steered in the direction of far easier marks. In the beginning, when he'd first arrived, he'd had to provide a handful of educational illustrations concerning the sort of treatment he wouldn't tolerate of his person or his property or, for that matter, anything and anyone associated with him; the memory lingered. Occasionally, the bolder ruffians would beg a cigarette, which he was usually civilized enough to provide, if only for the purpose of maintaining a bare minimum of good will among his closest neighbours, the ones who occasionally let rooms in the boarding-house where he lived. Among them he had a reputation for being a decent enough sort, if talked to amiably, good for a smoke and the occasional game of cards, but not the sort of bosom companion you'd gladly involve in your own criminal enterprises. This suited him quite well, since he had his own notions of what constituted a worthwhile enterprise and sufficient returns on his investments.

His boarding-house sat on Dorset Street, one among many and distinguished from the others to either side principally by the efforts of its landlady, who was also a laundress and advertised that fact in a small plaque hanging on the door. Otherwise, it was of precisely the same species and breed as the other buildings on the Street: low and dark and sordid, huddling together in a manner that suggested they were unable to fall over solely due to the press of numbers around them and the narrowness of the thoroughfare. His room was, at his assistance, on the second floor above the kitchen, to better collect the warmth leaking up from below, for which privilege he paid a somewhat higher rate than the other boarders. The rent tendered to the Widow Kinsella provided a room, and a bed, and fresh linens twice a month, and a hot brick wrapped in cotton-flannel to chase the cold out of them in the evening; otherwise, the tenants were on their own in matters of heat and food unless one managed to somehow ingratiate oneself with the landlady, which was not a feat accomplishable by charm alone. Tyki accomplished it by pure bribery in the form of extra money here and there, the occasional bottle of a better grade of rot-gut than the Widow was otherwise accustomed to at the holidays, and a willingness to apply his personal talents to extracting arrears rent payments from forgetful former tenants. In return, the landlady took messages for him, overlooked certain alterations he had made to the structure of his room for the purposes of improving its ability to hold heat, and, by night, kept herself warm by his fire while watching over his room's other occupant.

She was, in fact, sitting there when he entered, a woman of indeterminable years, all of them scrawled in some way on her face or form, half-napping in a scavenged chair next to the little alcohol-fed heating-stove. To the other side of her, the bed had been laid with another blanket, and beneath the blanket a human-shaped lump curled around itself and a pillow, completely shrouded but for tuft of eider-down hair at the top. "Ah, you're back. Business settled?"

"Settled enough, for the time being. Thank you for staying so long, Meg." His coat was starched with snow and damp almost all the way through again; he hung it and crossed to the stove to warm his hands. "How was he last night?"

"Crouped again, alas. There's nought to be done for it, I fear, but hope it takes warmer or at least less damp than it's been of late. I had to give him the last of that medicine just to let him sleep, the poor mite." She heaved herself to her feet. "I sent Jeremy to let Miss Dee at the Hall know that we'd need more."

His face was stiff with the cold yet, but he managed a genuine smile. "Thanks again. Any messages?"

His landlady, he knew, did not approve of his particular profession but acknowledged he was taking steps to remedy the situation; she settled for pursing her lips and nodding rather than engaging in a full-blown lecture she must have first heard at Mass sometime before she left Ireland. "Your gentleman friend sent his runner about; you're expected to attend him tonight. I hung your other suit to air."

"You are the finest woman in this entire benighted city, Meg Kinsella." He rose and pecked her impudently on the cheek, earning an affectionate swat in return. "Wake me in two hours?"

"I'll wake you in four, because you look fair knackered, and it doesn't take that long for a man to dress himself, even you." She replied tartly, shutting the door firmly behind her.

Tyki took the chair and simply sat for a moment, letting the warmth from the stove leak into his frozen bones, putting his head back and closing his eyes and thinking fixedly of nothing but how good it felt to be out of the wind. Next to him, the bedsprings squeaked as its occupant shifted slightly, and he opened his eyes to find a single pale hand working down the blankets until its owner could see over them. "You're home."

"That I am. I've breakfast, if you're hungry." He rose and fetched it, toast and sausages wrapped in butcher's-paper and a whole orange still in its skin. "And even if you're not, you should at least try to eat a mouthful or two."

Eaze smiled wanly and accepted the orange, peeling it and dividing its segments with equal care. "I was a little worried, you were gone so long." He spoke each word slowly, his breathing still more than a little laboured despite the medicine. "You saw him?"

"I saw him, and he's agreed to help." Tyki watched each bite of orange disappear, and started slicing sausage, which was eaten piece by piece as well. "It will just be a little while longer, I promise you that."

"I know." A brilliant smile, and he laid his head back down. Within moments he was asleep again, breathing rough but steady. Moving slowly for the sake of not disturbing the boy's rest again, Tyki pulled off his boots and rolled beneath the blankets on the other side of the bed, laying down his head and closing his eyes.

It was going to be a very long night.

"Communications Division. How might I help you?"

"It's the Bookman, responding to the message left at an obscenely early hour of the morning. How can I help I you? /I "

"Oh! Sir. It was a general check in. General Li wanted to know if you'd noticed anything unusual happening last night."

"…"

"Sir?"

"…No. Nothing unusual. Nothing at all."


	4. The Kingdom of the Blind

**Márton-hegyi Apátság, Magyarország, Pannonhalma House of the Black Order of Knights-Exorcist, 6 January 18—**

As a young woman, Exorcist General Miranda Lotte had never considered herself a particularly pious individual. She had not, for example, ever attended church with anything approaching regularity: she had sewed for the charitable societies sponsored by the wives of assorted ecclesiastical officials of the marrying variety, yes; she had rubbed beeswax polish into the floors and pews and refectory tables belonging to the non-marrying sort, yes; but she had rarely permitted herself the leisure to idle in any particular house of worship except on Christmas and Easter, when it seemed proper to offer a small word of thanks among all the others. After all, bad as things sometimes were in her life, they could always be that much worse and that they weren't she was inclined to attribute to divine intervention. It wasn't that she lacked faith – she was, in fact, quite sure that God had everything well in hand was generally untroubled by allegations to the contrary by certain of her loudly, publicly disgruntled countrymen – and she was equally sure that, as she had little to offer her wholly material employers, there was even less she could give to Omnipotence. That she might possess intrinsic personal value, invisible to human eyes, had never once entered her mind and once that truth had been blatantly obvious it still took a not inconsiderable length of time to fully settle in and become an immutable part of her character. Now that she was a somewhat older woman, General Lotte still did not consider herself particularly pious, though not for want of faith in the Almighty or direct knowledge of Its hand at work in the world; rather, her failure to observe niceties of form was a function of being continually embroiled in the demands of her office. In fact, she quite enjoyed finding new ways to make her position work for her in that regard, since she could think of nothing more irritating to the peace of her spirit than to sit about in chapel doing nothing while reports piled up on her desk or the men under her command sat idle for want of direction or someone needed help with their Algebra homework. And when there was no waiting pile to deal with, she often simply poked about the premises and found something else to tidy up, stitch back together, or scrub clean, metaphorically and literally, to the point that the refectory staff had permanently banned her presence from the kitchen in order to spare the crockery – she had never, after all, completely shed the physical awkwardness that had been the bane of her early life.

It was, in fact, before an empty desk that she found herself sitting that night, three days after Illes' visionary fit had chased her out of her bed and one after Rinali had emerged from her annual Twelve-tide hermitage. She had disposed the last of her official business some time before, a neat stack of reviewed and signed reports occupying the little wooden bin on the mirror-polished upper left hand corner, the little wooden bin in the upper right empty, waiting for more work to come to it, permanently ink-stained blotter bare but for a several sheets of paper, copies of the images Illes' visions had imparted. The originals had, of course, been forwarded to Home over the wireless network, but she had ordered Signals Division to make a copy for her personal files; she had, in fact, been poring over them for days, trying to make sense of whatever connection existed between them, if any. Now, five days later, she was still no closer to any particular answers on that score – and apparently neither was anyone else, to judge from the relative silence and lack of questions originating westward – and her concern had yet to abate in any serious way. Home had, in addition to asking no further questions of a frail and delicate child, not forwarded any comforting findings with regard to the fate of that child's subject matter.

She had not seen Ravi in the flesh for the best part of seven years. If Illes' vision was anything to judge by, those years had treated him at least passingly well: a scattering of silver in his red hair, a cluster of tiny wrinkles next to his single visible eye, a suggestion of something faintly sad about the set of his mouth. As a younger man, he was almost never to be found without a smile of some sort on his face, a teasing little smile that forced whomever he turned it on to smile back at him no matter how dire the situation, the tight fierce grin he flashed just before he called down lightning or fire or screaming sledgehammer winds, the softer, gentler expression he wore when he looked at everyone else and he thought no one else was looking back. She somehow got the feeling that nowadays he didn't smile half so much; she knew, from assorted reports that she'd seen in her official command capacity, that he had effectively resigned his position in the Black Order and remained connected to it by only the most tenuous of ties, more out of some sense of duty than any overwhelming desire to maintain that bond. If, indeed, there was any bond truly still there; she had not been privy, all those years ago, to the precise details of the events surrounding Ravi's departure from Home and his subsequent year-long disappearance, during which Komui Li had not precisely expended all the energies at his command searching for the somewhat wayward young Bookman. She had gathered, by virtue of being a shoulder to half the Order's weary, heart sore survivors, including Rinali, that something had passed between them that had cooled the once warm friendship they had enjoyed, but she had never felt it quite proper to press for more than that. She expected that, eventually, Rinali or Ravi or both would eventually come to her of their own recognizance and seek comfort or her advice or that the situation would eventually right itself as time worked its healing touch on both their hearts. But she had reckoned without the ferocity with which Rinali would nurture both her grief and her anger and Ravi's willingness to turn his back on everyone who had loved him and whom she had thought he loved in return. In truth, she had been hurt by that abandonment herself, especially in the days immediately after the end, when there had been so many in pain and in need and so few to offer help for it, so few to soothe the hurts and begin putting everyone and everything back together again. In truth, she had all-but given up on him but, then, the letters began arriving – first for Rinali and then for her, once a year, on their birthdays; that was how she learned he had set up premises in a working-class neighbourhood of London as a bookseller, that he thought of them often, that he missed them both fiercely, though he never said as much in so many words. As with many things about him, it came down to being able to read between his lines. Occasionally, she would even write back; even more occasionally, she would find some excuse to call him on the wireless network, some minor matter of research most often, so she could hear for herself that he was well.

Or, if not well, at least not laying dead in a ditch somewhere.

The wireless golem buzzed softly as she activated it, sounding like nothing so much as a wildflower field full of bees, a technical oddity that the Science Division nagged her regularly to have fixed, but which she found oddly endearing. "Signals."

"General?"

"Please connect me to the Bookman's wireless station."

"Just a moment, General." A pause, a number of clicks, a low cyclical droning.

It occurred to her, as she sat there waiting for the call to connect, that she really didn't have a good reason at all to be calling just now, practically in the middle of the night, and that she ought to come up with at least a half-reasonable attempt at a cover story. She was still rooting amongst the most recent field reports on her desk when the call connected.

"Hello...?"

Miranda froze, the papers in her hand rustling slightly, at the sound of Ravi's voice emerging from the wireless speaker; even in the single word he spoke, there was something audibly...off in his tone – something just slightly too tense, something almost wary. "Ravi. Hello – it's Miranda. Am I disturbing you?"

On the other end of the line, a quick intake of breath, expelled in a sigh. "Miranda. No, no, you're not disturbing me. I hadn't retired yet. What can I do for you?"

" – I – " A frantic flip through the papers provided her rescue. "One of my field teams recently brought a matter to my attention that I thought would interest you, as well. Have you ever heard of a 'Black Madonna'?"

"...Yes," A somewhat wry admission, as though he feared he was about to deflate her wholly manufactured enthusiasm. "'Heard' being the operative term, as I've never seen one. Why do you ask?"

"Evidently, there's one up and moving about the area. Or so the report I've received says – the team encountered at least three refugee villages in the area that claim to have been visited by a creature they describe as a 'walking statue' of the Virgin, black-skinned and glad in gold, speaking a language none of them knew. One of the team said the description reminded of the statue that had stood in Częstochowa, before the town was destroyed."

"Hm. I'll query the Archive, if you like, to see if I can come up with an image of the Virgin of Częstochowa for your teams to show about – there's more than enough evidence to support the idea that it might be an Innocence-bearing inanimate object," A pause. "Now. Why did you really call me?"

"...I wanted to see if you were well." She replied, softly. "I hadn't a chance to write or call before...before Christmas."

"I'm fine." His voice softened, as well. "Not even a sniffle to mar the joy of my holiday season, this year." Another pause, longer this time. "Is...Rina...?"

"Rinali is...well. Better than she was at this time last year, at least. The weather has held unusually mild." It came out in a rush, before she could stop it. "Ravi, there's a boy here...a little boy who carries a defensive form parasite-type...He sees things. Has visions, I should say, of things before they happen. He saw you, Ravi, and I'm very afraid that something – " She stopped, took several deep breaths. "I was worried that you might be in danger. You're still in London, aren't you?"

"Yes," He actually sounded a little amused around the edges. "But that doesn't mean I'm not in danger. The air here is terrible – you can choke to death on the fog on a hot summer's day."

"Ravi, please do not take this lightly. I – "

"I know. Miranda," He sounded so weary, for a moment her heart ached sharply in the back of her throat and tears pricked at her eyes, "Thank you for telling me. No one else called. I'll keep watch as best I can. And I'll call you in a day or two with what I can find. Agreed?"

"Agreed. But – " The line clicked closed before she could finish.

Within the ranks of the Black Order, years of long and bitter experience had affixed in the imaginations of all and sundry the proper image of what a sorcerer ought to look like. This image – heavily influenced by both the preferred appearance of the Order's most dire enemy and assorted lurid publications of a completely inappropriate nature that had found their way into the library's possession – was not what anyone could consider flattering: rotund to the point of grotesquery, features of an exaggeratedly distorted inhuman nature, a ludicrously overdeveloped sense of fashion that, laying over the aforementioned bloated corpus, was productive more of pure visual trauma more than any sort of sensual appreciation. Pince-nez. An umbrella. The literature of the time provided the occasional addition of a Satanic little goatee to the image, but not everyone thought such things the inevitable product of dabbling in the realm of arts and sciences man was not meant to know; the Order was willing to allow that some people simply didn't like to shave as often as Order general regulations and the basic standards of hygiene dictated. Similarly, it was usually understood that every sorcerer required, as part of his standard equipage, a sanctum of some sort: a high spindly tower rising over the ruins of a broken city or off the top of some lonely windswept mountain somewhere; a mist-shrouded island off the barren coast of some faraway land; a crumbling medieval fastness brooding on a cliff overlooking the valley in which his serfs trembled beneath his long, cold shadow. Were the sorcerer not evil – simply ancient and ascetic, a delver into the deep mysteries of the universe and a maker of divers and wonderful devices to aid mankind – he was occasionally permitted to resemble in form a member of the Science Division and possess a cosy if cluttered laboratory full of half-finished inventions and assorted masses of loose paper that were still scrawled in things that didn't bear close examination.

Exorcist General Marian Cross (Ret.) thus managed to avoid being known as a sorcerer by virtue of failing in nearly every respect to adhere to type or stereotype except one – the Satanic little goatee – and generally behaving in a manner that suggested his darkest secrets likely revolved around the number of redheaded children left behind everywhere he travelled in his misspent youth. This was the way he preferred it, for otherwise he knew in his heart of hearts he would spend most of his waking hours shoving heartsick young men and women begging him for love spells, love potions, love advice, or, occasionally, simply love out of his office with a push broom and writing stern letters to their parents about the sort of morally deficient offspring they were raising. He had decided, when he took the post of Headmaster at the Walker School, that he would make an honest (for him) attempt at rehabilitating his thoroughly disreputable reputation for at least a decade or so and, thus, it behoved him not to bed the sizeable portion of the student body who sat classes with him and immediately became smitten or otherwise encourage the sort of immoral behaviours amongst the ones who were smitten with each other that would inevitably result in Crown educational inspectors making even more snide remarks about the state of Scottish education in their annual reports than they already did. Thus he permitted his students and faculty to suspect that all his oats were sown quite well in the past, that he was doing his best to atone for all that hell-raising by becoming a valuable and staid member of the academic community, and that the abnormal dimensions of his office and personal quarters were tricks of the light and well-placed mirrors and not a function of skills he had learned in schools of a far darker provenance than any of them could guess at much less imagine. Being a sorcerer, he did, after all, require a sanctum.

He also, on the morning after Twelfth Night, required a vast quantity of black coffee, assorted preparations obtained from the local chemist suitable for the treatment of an aching head and a somewhat sour stomach, a comfortably be pillowed sopha on which to lounge most of the morning while taking all those things, along with a breakfast of soft-cooked eggs, toasted bread, milky porridge, and other foods gentle to the digestion for he was as cruelly, viciously hungover as he could ever recall being. Over the Christmas and New Year's holidays it was his custom of at least the last several years to spend that halcyon period of time when the school was empty of all but him and the kitchen staff in as profound a state of personal dissipation, debauchery, and general rakish disregard for the high honour of the position he occupied as he could manage. This year, he managed spectacularly and he privately blamed the cook's egg-nog, which was precisely as potent as she had suggested and probably somewhat more. Also: Cloud Nine's presence Home for the first time in several years, which they had celebrated exuberantly enough that he suspected the presence of bruises in places that would prove most embarrassing over the next handful of days. It was thus that the cook, Mrs. McFarland, found him, sprawled on a sopha stolen from the innards of some depraved heathen sultan's pleasure-palace, only dubiously clad in a pair of loose silk trousers, a sleeping-mask pulled over his eyes, snoring quietly, as the hour drew close to midday.

"Headmaster."

The gentle chorus of snores did not cease in any appreciable way.

"Headmaster."

The aforementioned rolled over onto his side away from her, pulling a coverlet over his head to augment the sleeping-mask.

"Headmaster, the General's respects and will you kindly drag yourself out of bed before tea? He's come all the way from Italy to see you."

"Italy?" Cross sat up, shedding coverlet and mask in one swift motion. "General Theodore is here?"

"I warned you about the egg-nog, but would you listen? No, you did not." Mrs. Jennet McFarland was a formidable woman of middle years, comprised of equal parts admirable efficiency, the boundless capacity for meddling, and no tolerance whatsoever for fools; she made it quite clear on a regular basis that she only tolerated working for him because, otherwise, she feared he would burn the building down. "Yes, General Theodore is here. I have laid a meal in the private dining parlour and I expect you to attend him there in no less than a quarter of an hour. And put on some clothes, you heathen."

A quarter of an hour and precisely thirty seconds later, Marian Cross entered the private dining parlour set aside for the entertainment of visiting dignitaries and assorted parents of sufficiently advanced social position, clad in something resembling decent clothing inasmuch as all his major limbs were covered, though he had refused to brush his hair. General Froi Theodore, seated at the table laid before the cheerfully crackling fire and looking approximately a century older than he had the last time Cross had laid eyes on him, declined to rise but instead inclined his head briefly in greeting and reached out to pour the tea. Theodore was, Cross realized, not dressed in his formal black-and-gold uniform for the first time in memory, but a somewhat travel stained suit of unrelieved black: black linen shirt, watered silk black waistcoat, sharply creased black trousers, jet cravat pin and cuff-links and buttons, either still in full mourning for his apprentices or fresh mourning for someone more recently dead. The ensemble did him no favours: his already deep-set eyes seemed sunken even more deeply into his saturnine face, his skin touched with an unhealthy pallor beneath the light tan he had acquired at some point since moving permanently south.

"Theo. To what do I owe the honour of this visit to my present bailiwick?" Cross sat, trying not to be too visibly shocked; Theodore had not been a young man when they first met but the change in him was drastic even so, and could not all be attributed to the Mediterranean climate he had been marinating in since his election to his current post: the Order's resident ambassadorial delegate to the Holy See, the reward for a lifetime of service, an inadequate balm for cruel loss.

"I cannot simply call upon an old friend?" Theodore's usually gentle smile, framed in the deep grooves worn by a lifetime of such smiles, seemed somehow less than totally sincere.

"Oh, certainly you could call – if you were coming from Edinburgh, not, oh, to choose a random example, Rome." Cross replied with pardonable asperity, accepting the steaming cup handed him and liberally adulterating its contents with sugar and a freshly cut round of lemon, in the absence of whisky. "What – "

"I have resigned my commission," Theodore's soft voice crossed his own and silenced him as effectively as a shout. "And my ambassadorial position at the Vatican."

"What." He could not quite manage the inflection necessary to make that a question, so surprised was he.

"I am dying, Marian," Theodore answered as though he had, anyway. "I have been ill for some time – there is nothing more to be done for it, and so I have come home while I am still able to travel."

"I – " Cross stopped, considered, restarted. "I could try – "

"No. I have not come here to beg the aid of your arts, Marian. My sons sleep here, and soon I will sleep beside them." Theodore set down his cup and bent, with obvious difficulty, to extract a thick packet of documents, wrapped in an aged leather folio and bound with rough twine. "I have come to bring these to you – certain documents of a somewhat...prejudicial nature that Inquisitor-Commander Link thought best extracted from the Vatican archive..." He handed the package across the table. "And also to deliver you a warning. His Holiness has ordered the activation of a special unit of the Inquisition Contra Diabolum enim et alii Daemones."

"What?" Cross looked up from the folio, an entirely too familiar-looking folio by half, stunned twice in as many minutes.

"The Holy See has come to the not entirely irrational conclusion that the threat currently facing humanity is far greater than that arising from any number of feral akuma." Theodore refreshed his tea, sipped meditatively, and continued on. "The number of accommodators has not, after all, fallen off but has continued to increase since the advent of the Heart. That implies, to some, the continued existence of a threat vulnerable to Innocence that is not directly derivative of the Earl of the Millennium, or entirely dependent upon his acts."

"The Noah."

"Even so."

"And so the rational response was to reactivate an arm of the Inquisition responsible for hunting witches and demons?" Cross' couldn't quite keep the derision from his voice. "Who thought that was the height of brilliance, I'd like to know – "

"Malcolm Louvellier." The sound of Theodore setting down his teacup was the loudest thing in the room for several moments thereafter. "Or, to be more precise, he heavily promoted the idea, along with Inquisitor-General Montesi and an assortment of Cardinals, bishops, and individuals who have no excuse for not knowing better. It is my understanding that an Inquisitorial delegation will be dispatched to the Order before spring arrives."

"To the Order. For what bloody purpose? Innocence doesn't detect the presence of Noah – "

"No – but the Order does possess the most expansive collection of information concerning the House of Noah, due to the efforts of the Bookmen to compile and relay such information, and the most salient direct experience in dealing with the Noah. The Inquisitors are coming to interrogate and train." A deep sigh emerged from him, and Cross very distinctly felt an even worse headache than he'd already possessed coming on quite swiftly. "They are also enjoined to determine what, if any, resources the Order possesses that might enable the identification of Noah who have not yet awakened – and, if such resources do not yet exist, they are to require the Order's assistance in developing them."

"...That's insane."

"'Preventative measures,' are, I believe, the term that is currently being employed." Theodore paused for a moment to finish his tea. "I do not know precisely what connection you possess to the House of Noah, Marian – I do not want to know, and I have made a point of never learning it – but I doubt that the Inquisitorial delegation will exercise such forebearance. You may wish to consider what you want to do with the rest of your life."

River Wendham was not a man given to regular effusive expressions of emotion – any emotion. When all was panicky, tearstained bedlam around him, he preferred to be the strong pillar of calm and sanity to which others clung instead of another voice in the chorus of doom. When one of Komui's innumerable ill-conceived experiments ran amuck, he preferred to be the one clinging to its back wielding the coffee pot or the giant diamond-tipped armour-cracking drill rather than one of the screamers fleeing to relative safety in one of the rooms equipped with a blast-proof door. When lovesick young Exorcists or Support Division personnel came to him with their hearts on their sleeves, he preferred to shoo them out the door with a firmly-worded command to seek advice from Jerry, since he had forgotten more about such things than anyone else in the Order even knew. He had, to his subordinates' knowledge, only had any sort of emotional display not related to near-fatal exasperation with Komui Li only a handful of times in all his years with the Order, and those displays came at the nadir of tragedy or the height of triumph: the cruel aftermath of the akuma attack that had nearly destroyed the Motherhouse; discovering that, against all reason and hope, Allen Walker had survived the destruction of his Innocence, the near-destruction of his own body, and had emerged stronger than anyone could have imagined. No one could easily recall him losing his temper at anyone or anything other than their somewhat feckless Chief of Operations-turned-General. He was most certainly not the sort of person to lose his temper at largely inanimate objects, thump those objects while swearing loudly, or otherwise consider defenestrating those objects when the thumping and the swearing failed to achieve the desired results.

"This makes absolutely no sense."

This declaration went unheeded both by the universe in general and the recalcitrant analytical engine sitting on the desk, humming peacefully, emitting the occasional high-pitched tone, and continuing to display an entirely unsatisfactory analysis of the data that had been laboriously entered into it. River, despite his general dedication to not treating inanimate objects as though they possessed sufficient intellect to thwart him personally when there were enough animate objects on hand to satisfy that purpose, glared, swore quietly again, and repeated the query, for the fourth time that morning. The analytical engine – admittedly a handsome specimen of the breed, sleek and black and considerably smaller than the early generations taking up storage space in the lower levels – hummed thoughtfully to itself, beeped, and returned the same analysis that it had been all morning. River took a deep, cleansing breath and expelled it in a shout.

"Johnny."

Johnny was, River suspected, lurking rather close to the office door, as he presented himself before the echoes finished bouncing off the main laboratory's walls. "Chief?"

"I must have done something wrong – I checked the figures a half-dozen times before I put them into this...thing...but it keeps returning a null result." River glowered at the machine, which purred quietly as Johnny turned it to examine the analysis. "It seems to like you. If you've got the time, could you – "

"Check the data-entry and run the query again?" Johnny smiled wryly. "Sure. How far did you expand the search parameters?"

"All the way – every active and retired Exorcist." River rose and stepped aside, letting Johnny have his seat. "I'm beginning to think we might have read the whole thing wrong from the start. In any case, I need to update Komui. Can we have this done by supper-time?"

"I think so."

"Thanks, Johnny."

River left the laboratory by the swiftest route, taking the lift out of the Science Division down into the realm of the "public," where lay the office he never really used and Komui Li had never really relinquished. The floor was, as always, covered to a depth of approximately two feet with paperwork Komui was resolutely refusing to attend to despite the somewhat enhanced responsibilities of his new position and the man himself was seated behind a desk tottering with enormous piles of the same, be-rabbited coffee mug in one hand the receiver of his wired communications unit in the other. He waved the mug by way of greeting as River removed a stack of personnel files from the office's only other useable chair and seated himself.

"Yes, I understand. I'll put some of the novices out to watch the train station for his arrival. Thank you for letting me know." Komui set the receiver down. "Well. General Theodore managed to leave his escort behind in Calais -- Marie seems to think he's coming Home, eventually, but has a stop or two he plans to make one the way." A little smile came and went. "I don't think I'll warn Cross."

"You enjoy torturing him a little too much, Komui." River shook his head in mock-sorrow; Cross enjoyed torturing the rest of the Order far too much. "We may have a problem with our little 'discovery.' The analysis of the data isn't panning out the way we thought it would – the signature in the pulse that the Heart emitted doesn't seem to match the energy signature of any of the Exorcists we have current data for, which would be more or less all of them."

"What about – "

"I checked Ravi's most recent data first. Unless his Innocence evolved drastically or he dramatically improved his synchronization ratio, the energy signature is not his. The problem is, it doesn't seem to belong to anyone else we know of, either." River ran an irritated hand through his hair and admitted, grudgingly, "Which leaves us only two options, really: either a data-entry error in the analytical engine is causing the query to fail, or the Heart's resonation was caused by the emergence of a new Exorcist – an incredibly strong, extremely well-synchronized Exorcist."

"And which answer do you prefer, Chief?" Komui asked dryly.

"I have Johnny hand-checking the data for errors – which, admittedly, I already did – and running the query again. I'm almost hoping I transposed some digits somewhere." A sigh. "I'd rather not be pinned down at Home when...you know."

"Yes. Did they write back?" Komui refreshed his coffee and pushed a second mug across the desk to River who, for a change, took it.

"Oh, yes. Yes, they did. They'd like to meet us for dinner at the Avondale dining-parlour Tuesday after next, before the Royal Thaumaturgical Society meeting." He took a pull on the coffee cup, grimaced at the incredible black bitterness of it, and swallowed manfully. "I'm going to say 'yes,' if that's agreeable to you."

"Of course. I've wanted to meet your parents for an age." Komui's smile came and went quickly, and he fished through the papers scattered on the topmost layer of his desk. "I also want to go into London for an entirely separate reason, I'm afraid." He pushed a folded newspaper, liberally covered in coffee-mug circles, across to River, as well. "I'm beginning to think that Ravi might not have been completely honest with us."

It was a copy of The Daily Telegraph, dated 4 January 18--, the front page above the fold taken up with a grainy dageurreotype: the boles of a half-dozen trees leaning at decidedly unnatural angles, a mass of twisted wreckage half-sunk in what looked like the remnants of a once-impressive body of water, a number of uniformed police-men and assorted other staid official sorts surveying the impressive degree of damage. The banner headline, in inch-tall letters, read THE DESTRUCTION IN HYDE PARK.

"Oh, dear," River muttered, and read.

"Yes, that's rather what I said. You'll note the witness testimony – "

"Komui..."

"The Serpentine wouldn't have risen 'half a hundred feet' out of its bank without supernatural intervention. No matter how hard the wind might have been blowing. You know that's true as well as I do – and there's only one Exorcist in the world, much less in London, whose Innocence allows him to command the elements." Komui leaned back in his chair, and glanced away. "I think we should have him placed under discreet surveillance."

"Komui." River pinched the bridge of his nose, feeling a headache coming on. "I...agree that something unusual went on in the Park. I also agree that Ravi...was not wholly forthcoming when he told us that he didn't notice any such thing going on. But...why don't we talk to him first? We'll be in London in two weeks, anyway – if we're not satisfied with the answers he gives us, then we can set some Watchers on him."

"What makes you think he'd answer us any more truthfully face-to-face?" Komui asked in tones of pure exasperation. "He's the straightest liar any of us have ever known."

"Komui. Please."

"Very well, Chief. If that's your recommendation, I'll take it under advisement." A pause. "I don't know what you still see in him, River."

"You will." River handed the paper back. "Eventually."

Tyki woke in perfect darkness and nearly perfect silence, the sound of his own breathing, his own laboured heart beating the loudest sounds he could hear, the taste of blood thick on his lips. It took a long moment but, eventually, he managed to identify that blood as his own. The sound that made it past his lips was made up of roughly equal parts relief and disgust: relief, because much of the last day or so was, at best, a blur of deeply unpleasant sense-memory but at least he could say with a comforting degree of certainty that he hadn't killed anyone; disgust because it was simply never pleasant to wake in utter darkness with his hair plastered to a pillow by what felt quite distinctly like his own dried blood, still bound up in a considerable length of cordage, with a sore throat parched utterly dry. Working enough moisture into his mouth to manage words was a ridiculously lengthy production that only enhanced the nasty taste, pushing disgust well ahead of relief in the hierarchy of his personal reactions. "Hello? Is anyone there?"

Silence. Which was, all things being equal, rather what he hoped for: silence allowed for the possibility of disentangling himself and slipping out the back without having to encounter anyone he didn't really want to meet, just now, which included the majority of the household. Someone answering would have required formal dress and being pleasant over breakfast, two activities he felt quite strongly could only lead to the immediate dispensation of horrible violence or, at the very least, more sarcasm than would really be good for him in the long run. It also allowed him to dispense with his bonds by the expedient of simply passing through them, or letting them pass through him, as the case happened to be. An eye blink of insubstantiality restored his personal mobility but did not instil any particular desire for actual motion and so he simply lay where he was, taking stock of the situation, mind functioning at the level of a slow amble, at best. He felt about as well as could be expected, which wasn't very, though the worst of it seemed to have healed during his – day? Day and night? Impossible to tell – period of restful repose, though there was still the odd sore spot here and there and his throat ached abominably, only partially with thirst. Reaching up, his questing fingertips encountered just what he'd expected: a thin line, no, two lines of clotted blood, stretched across his throat like a double-strand of rusty pearls, one longer and deeper than the other. With a disgusted sound, he let his hand fall away, back into the covers alongside him.

It took him a moment to realize the object that his hand thus encountered actually belonged to another human being and that it was, in fact, a hand itself; the flesh was cold, the skin had the consistency of desiccated, hardened leather, and the fingers themselves were contorted in a posture suggestive of extreme pain. Tyki's hand recoiled at once and the rest of his body followed suit, right over the side of the bed, encountering an assortment of unkindly positioned furniture and abandoned aides de amour as he went. It wasn't so much the waking up next to a corpse that bothered him – he had, in fact, done so more than once – it was the sensations involved in touching it: he had, in his time, produced a fair number of corpses and knew in an entirely intimate way the feel of a body recently evicted of its resident, and that corpse was in no way fresh. Moving with extreme care, he felt about along the bedside furniture, locating first a candlestick, and then the candle that had been in it, and finally a lucifer match with which to light it. The corpse was one of Madame's preferred type, a lithe and lissom nymphet whose slender charms were more likely the result of living in East End penury than any deliberate effort at maintaining an enticing figure, probably no more than fifteen and likely somewhat less. He risked a glance at her face and was somewhat relieved to find that she wasn't someone he knew, or at least wasn't someone he recognized, from what he could see: the lower half of her face was partially obscured by the apparatus that had been used to muffle any sounds she might have made. Her throat was a still-livid welter of bruises and had, he was fairly certain, been quite comprehensively crushed; she had choked to death on her own blood. Swallowing hard, he examined his own hands and found them gratifyingly free of bloodstains, scratch-marks, or anything lodged under the nails that might have suggested an intimate involvement in her demise. In fact, he couldn't even remember her arrival much less her demise, no matter how he cudgelled his brain, a fact he found quite thoroughly disturbing.

The entertainment room exited into the private bedroom suite, through the back of an enormous wardrobe that took up the majority of one wall in the Master's private dressing-room and which did, in fact, contain a considerable selection of perfectly ordinary clothing. Tyki wrapped himself in a linen dressing-down, holding the neck closed high, and tugged the bedchamber bell-pull to summon a servant, settling down to wait in front of the low-burning fire, thinking fixedly of nothing. A handful of minutes passed, and then came a knock on the door, and Mrs. Landry, the chief housemaid, poked her head into the room; Tyki offered her appalled look a somewhat wan smile. "I'm afraid Their Excellencies were in a rather uncivilized temper...last night? Yesterday?"

"Oh, dear." Mrs. Landry was a woman of absolutely flawless servile character: she would never take it into her mind to criticize her employers, no matter how much trouble they made for her with their excesses. "I'll warn Bertram. And it was three days ago now, ducks, don't you remember?"

"Three – " Tyki stopped, took a deep breath, and forced his voice back down again. "Three days. Of course. It's quite easy to lose track of time, without the sun or a clock to go by."

"I'm certain it is. Can I get you anything, love? You look peaky." She was also a creature of perfect motherly inclinations, as evidenced by her willingness to treat everyone beneath her roof as though they were an orphan child only in need of a warm meal and a new suit of clothes to set them right, no matter who that person might be.

"I assure you I feel peaky. A hot bath would be lovely, and a pot of tea if there's one to be had." He didn't think himself capable of being less hungry, but his desire to wash the abominable taste and dryness out of his mouth was almost impossibly strong.

"Of course. I'll send Margaret up straightaway." The door clicked shut.

Tyki laid his head back, closed his eyes, and tried not to think too deeply on the fact that he had, somewhere, lost three days.

"Chief."

"Johnny – you're up late. I didn't think you had night-watch tonight – "

"I don't...I wanted to bring you the results of the query I ran. I...didn't think you'd want me to wait till morning."

"You got it to work?"

"Yes. I had to...expand the parameters again, but, yes, I got it to work. Your data-entry was fine, by the way, that wasn't the problem. We just weren't looking in the right places."

"What do you mean? The only parameter I excluded was – "

"Yes, I know. I added all the...all the data from the inactive files, just to see what would happen when I ran the query again. River – "

"...What is it?"

"It's Allen's, River. The energy signature that the Heart just emitted belongs to Allen Walker."


End file.
